Then she fell asleep again, her hand still clutching her husband’s hair, as painters represent an executioner holding the head of a traitor up to public view.
The sickly, tremulous glimmer of the night-light, in the porcelain shade with its opalescent and pearly transparency, throwing a broad quavering circle on the ceiling, gave light enough to cast ill-defined shadows of their forms and faces. The sad twilight, suggesting that which must prevail in Limbo, gave a doubtful solidity to everything in the room, and soothed the senses to a torpid state verging on stupor. Leon lay neither waking nor sleeping; fatigue kept him from thorough wakefulness and anxious thoughts prevented sleep. The night was far advanced when he heard a slight noise in the room, and looked up much startled, for it seemed impossible that any one should come in at that hour. His blood ran chill as he saw a form, a shape, a shade slowly coming towards him. It looked no more substantial than an optical illusion caused by the mysterious light in the china shade. Happily he had no belief in ghosts. He wanted to examine the phantom, which he immediately perceived to be a living human creature, but he could not stir. María’s fingers held his hair, and the slightest movement would have disturbed his wife who was sleeping peacefully. He raised his arm to gesticulate a warning as he could not express himself in any other way, but the figure paid no heed; it came up to the bed and leaned over it with evident curiosity, not unmingled with fear. Leon could feel himself enveloped, so to speak, in a gaze of melancholy pathos. His heart throbbed as violently as a maniac struggling in a strait waistcoat. He was furious—he dared not speak, dared not move to exorcise this nightmare visitation; he saw that the phantom—to give it this childish appellation—moved its head as if in reproach, or disapprobation, or despair. Then it fled hastily and incautiously, making more noise than at its entrance, and leaving a sort of chill on its passage, like that of a sudden draught of air.
María woke with a start.
“Leon, Leon,” she cried, “I saw....”
“What? Do not talk wildly.”
“I saw—and I heard a noise like that of a silk gown—some one running....”
“Compose yourself. No one has been in the room.”
“But I saw it,” said María, covering her eyes with her hands. “I thought a woman went out at that door.”
“Go to sleep again, and do not see and hear things that do not exist.”
“Was it Padre Paoletti?”