Still ruminating over these different conjectures, I heard a neighbouring clock strike two. I now noticed for the first time signs of life in the lower apartment which I first mentioned; shadows, reflected on the blinds, moved swiftly to and fro, and, growing gigantic, vanished.
But not for long. Soon they reappeared, and the shades were at last drawn up. I had now an unobstructed view of the room, which proved to be a drawing-room, as I had already surmised. It was dismantled for the summer, and the pictures and furniture were hidden under brown holland. A man leant against the window with his head bowed down, in an attitude expressive of complete exhaustion or of great grief. It was too dark for me to distinguish his features; but I noticed that he was tall and dark, with a youthful, athletic figure.
After standing there a few minutes, he turned away. His actions now struck me as most singular. He crawled on the floor, disappeared under sofas, and finally moved even the heavy pieces of furniture from their places. However valuable the thing which he had evidently lost might be, yet 2 A.M. seemed hardly the hour in which to undertake a search for it.
Meanwhile, my attention had been a good deal distracted from the man by observing a woman in one of the bedrooms of the floor immediately above, and consequently belonging to the same suite. When I first caught sight of her, the room was already ablaze with light and she was standing by the window, gazing out into the darkness. At last, as if overcome by her emotions, she threw up her hands in a gesture of despair, and, kneeling down with her elbows on the window sill, buried her head in her arms. Her hair was so dark that, as she knelt there against the light, it was undistinguishable from her black dress.
I don’t know how long she stayed in this position, but the man below had given up his search and turned out the lights long before she moved. Finally, she rose slowly up, a tall black-robed figure, and disappeared into the back of the room. I waited for some time hoping to see her again, but as she remained invisible and nothing further happened, and the approaching dawn held out hopes of a more bearable temperature below, I decided to return to my divan; but the last thing I saw before descending was that solitary light, keeping its silent vigil in the great black building.
