“But—” she gasped.
“No buts,” said the voice.
So she sat up, grasping the pillow behind her with both hands, and for the first time in her life, and perhaps the last, she knew what it was to feel her hair literally rising.
And there—yes, Deborah never forgot it—there stood the dark, dusky form so different from that which her imagination pictured.
Her first wild longing was to get up and run, crying for help, but every limb seemed frozen.
“What! will you run away from that which you have laughed at?” said the even voice. “Look!”
She looked.
It was a face and figure to remember, just above medium height, not too tall. One arm rested on the bed-post, and he was slightly leaning towards the bed. But the face. Every feature was perfect and most finely cut. The chin a little square, though more inclined to oval. The mouth proud and firm, with lips bent into a cruel and perpetual smile. The nose straight and strong and perfect. The forehead high and with one deep wrinkle. But the eyes—who, having seen them, could forget them? They were the only thing about him that was not human. They were deep-set, gloomy, cruel, far-reaching, and yet not the least like human eyes. They seemed as if they showed you things, terrible things, too awful to be spoken of.
And Deborah, held by a power much stronger than herself, looked right into them, into those great black sombre dusky balls of hidden fire, and they returned the stare.
Suddenly she began to find the feeling of extreme fear passing.