But I knew that I must get away, out of sight of this moveless and
diabolic figure, which did not speak, but which made known its
commands by means of its eyes alone. "Resign her!" the eyes said.
"Tear your love for her out of your heart! Swear that you will never
see her again--or I will ruin you utterly, not only now, but forever
more!"
And though I trembled, my eyes answered "No."
For some reason which I cannot at all explain, I suddenly took off my
overcoat, and, drawing aside the screen which ran across the corner of
the room at my right hand, forming a primitive sort of wardrobe, I
hung it on one of the hooks. I had to feel with my fingers for the
hook, because I kept my gaze on the figure.
"I will go into the bedroom," I said.
And I half-turned to pass through the doorway. Then I stopped. If I
did so, the eyes of the ghost would be upon my back, and I felt that I
could only withstand that glance by meeting it. To have it on my
back!... Doubtless I was going mad. However, I went backwards through
the doorway, and then rapidly stepped out of sight of the apparition,
and sat down upon the bed.
Useless! I must return. The mere idea of the empty sitting-room--empty
with the ghost in it--filled me with a new and stranger fear. Horrible
happenings might occur in that room, and I must be there to see them!
Moreover, the ghost's gaze must not fall on nothing; that would be too
appalling (without doubt I was mad); its gaze must meet something,
otherwise it would travel out into space further and further till it
had left all the stars and waggled aimless in the ether: the notion of
such a calamity was unbearable. Besides, I was hungry for that gaze;
my eyes desired those eyes; if that glance did not press against them,
they would burst from my head and roll on the floor, and I should be
compelled to go down on my hands and knees and grope in search for
them. No, no, I must return to the sitting-room. And I returned.
The gaze met me in the doorway. And now there was something novel in
it--an added terror, a more intolerable menace, a silent imprecation
so frightful that no human being could suffer it. I sank to the
ground, and as I did so I shrieked, but it was an unheard shriek,
sounding only within the brain. And in reply to that unheard shriek I
heard the unheard voice of the ghost crying, "Yield!"
I would not yield. Crushed, maddened, tortured by a worse than any
physical torture, I would not yield. But I wanted to die. I felt that
death would be sweet and utterly desirable. And so thinking, I faded
into a kind of coma, or rather a state which was just short of coma. I
had not lost consciousness, but I was conscious of nothing but the
gaze.