 | I. Visions—A Phantasy |  |
1. I.
FOR a long time I tried in vain to sleep and kept tossing from side to side. "The devil take all this nonsense of tipping tables," I said to myself, "it certainly shakes the nerves." At length, however, drowsiness began to get the upper hand.
Suddenly it seemed to me that a harp-string twanged feebly in my chamber. I lifted my head. The moon was low in the sky and shone full in my face; its light lay like a chalk-mark on the carpet. The strange sound was distinctly repeated. I raised myself on my elbow, my heart beat forcibly. A minute passed so— another—then in the distance a cock crowed and a second answered him from yet further.
My head fell back on the pillow. "It comes even to that," I thought, "my ears are fairly ringing."
In a moment more I was asleep, or seemed to myself to be sleeping. I had a singular dream. I thought that I was in my own chamber, in my own bed, wide awake. Suddenly I hear the noise again. I turn. The moonbeam on the floor begins to waver, to rise, to take shape, stands motionless before me like the white figure of a woman, transparent as mist.
"Who are you?" I ask, trying to retain my composure.
A voice resembling the soughing of the wind among tree-tops answers me. "It is I—I—I. I am come for you."
"For me? But who are you?"
"Come at nightfall to the old oak tree at the edge of the wood. I will be there."
I wish to see more closely the features of this mysterious being; an involuntary cold shudder runs through me. I find myself not lying, but in a sitting posture on my bed, and where the appearance of the figure was there is a long pale moon streak on the floor.
| I. Visions—A Phantasy | |