"A man doesn't have to have an ugly face to be a brute!"
"There's nothing more, so you can stop torturing yourself. Quite suddenly he was gone, almost as if he'd never been there. It was all like some hideous nightmare, one of those dangerous, utterly terrifying dreams from which you awaken just in time. They're dangerous because people have died in their sleep just from shock. But I did awaken in time. You'll never know how relieved I felt, how inwardly glad."
"Then why are you still so frightened? Nothing happened to you. It's over and done with. Even his actual presence in your room, when you heard him speak, may have been an hallucination. Perfectly normal people can have hallucinations. What else is bothering you, Janice?"
She toyed with her coffee cup for a moment before answering, then spoke in a low voice. "An even stranger, more terrifying, thing happened. Harder to explain and ghastly in a completely non-human way. I don't think I was in quite as much danger, because it just stood there in the hall watching me without moving at all. But I had the feeling that if it did move I'd be in even greater danger."
"It? Janice, what are you talking about?"
"Just give me a moment, darling. I'll tell you, but please don't rush me. Let me tell it in my own way. It was so frightening, so unbelievable that the mere thought of it makes me almost physically ill. In a way, it could be an hallucination, because I did have the shock of the other experience before I saw it. No shock preceded the first experience, as I told you, but this one—"
"All right now, try to stay calm. You're in no danger now. You're safe here with me. Remember that."
"I'll try."
"I love you very much."
"I know you do, darling. Well, I calmed myself down so successfully that I believe I could have gone back to sleep again. But I decided instead to get dressed and go out. I thought the fresh air might help to clear the cobwebs out of my brain.