“And now for the first time I detected it was accompanied by incongruous though perfectly intelligible sound—the sound of someone tapping with all their might, tapping with a pair of high-heeled shoes.
“Aghast at this discovery, my perplexities increased, and I was vainly endeavouring to extricate myself from a chaotic quagmire of unpleasant thoughts, when a scream, the very intensity of which made me tremble, echoed and re-echoed throughout the house.
“‘Fire! Fire! Bring me Fire!’ These words, apparently so strangely paradoxical, were repeated with renewed vigour and anguish, the voice after each effort dying away into the most appalling and piteous wail.
“The screams were coming nearer, but before I had time to realise the tumult was so close at hand, or to fortify myself against the tableau I now had every reason to anticipate, a girl, her hair and dress a mass of lurid flames, came rushing frantically into the gallery.
“The spectacle she presented was so satanically awful that I immediately crossed myself. An indescribable thrill of terror ran through me. I felt—I KNEW—I was actually in the presence of an apparition; nothing ‘earthly’ could possibly have produced a similar or in any way equivalent effect.
“Staring at me through the yellow inferno of flames was a woman’s face that, despite its horribly contorted features, was amazingly and uniquely beautiful, the perfect regularity of the Jewish lineaments being strikingly enhanced by the whiteness of the teeth, the blueness of the eyes.
“The latter came upon me as a further shock. Though very lovely both in their excessive length and hue, they did not match that style of face; to have done so they should have been black or brown—and their expression was repellent.
“I say repellent; I might with great accuracy say ‘hellish,’ for I saw in them the mirror of a sinful soul—of a VERY sinful soul.
“I could form no idea as to her dress, the blaze effectually hid everything save her face; but from the partial glimpse I caught of a pair of satin shoes, I surmised she was in some sort of ball-room costume. The duration of her transit, though to me an eternity, could not, I fancy, have occupied more than a very few seconds.