The Ghost by Arnold Bennet Chapter 7 Page 1

THE VIGIL BY THE BIER

We looked at each other, Rosa and I, across the couch of Alresca.

All the vague and terrible apprehensions, disquietudes, misgivings, which the gradual improvement in Alresca’s condition had lulled to sleep, aroused themselves again in my mind, coming, as it were, boldly out into the open from the dark, unexplored grottos wherein they had crouched and hidden. And I went back in memory to those sinister days in London before I had brought Alresca to Bruges, days over which a mysterious horror had seemed to brood.

I felt myself adrift in a sea of frightful suspicions. I remembered Alresca’s delirium on the night of his accident, and his final hallucination concerning the blank wall in the dressing-room (if hallucination it was),