I see the room in which they live. It is very poor.
An old-fashioned piano stands in one corner, and beside it is a table on
which lie scattered a tumbled mass of papers round an ink-stand. An
empty chair waits before the table. The woman sits by the open window.
From far below there rises the sound of a great city. Its lights throw
up faint beams into the dark room. The smell of its streets is in the
woman's nostrils.
Every now and again she looks towards the door and listens: then turns to
the open window. And I notice that each time she looks towards the door
the evil in her face shrinks back; but each time she turns to the window
it grows more fierce and sullen.
Suddenly she starts up, and there is a terror in her eyes that frightens
me as I dream, and I see great beads of sweat upon her brow. Then, very
slowly, her face changes, and I see again the evil creature of the night.
She wraps around her an old cloak, and creeps out. I hear her footsteps
going down the stairs. They grow fainter and fainter. I hear a door
open. The roar of the streets rushes up into the house, and the woman's
footsteps are swallowed up.
Time drifts onward through my dream. Scenes change, take shape, and
fade; but all is vague and undefined, until, out of the dimness, there
fashions itself a long, deserted street.
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