To Alice’s horror her business in the room was plainly not over yet. The woman stood erect, drawing a long breath, holding her underlip slightly in her teeth, with just a little nip. She turned her face toward the bed, and for the first time Alice now quite distinctly saw it—pale, seamed with small-pox, blind. This large face was now turned toward her, and the light of the candle, screened by the curtain from Alice’s eyes, fell full upon its exaggerated and evil features. The woman had drawn in a long, full breath, as if coming to a resolution that needed some nerve.
Whatever this woman had come into the room for, Alice thought, with hope, that she, at all events, as she stood pallid and lowering before her, with eyes white with cataract, and brows contracted in malignant calculation, knew nothing, as she undoubtedly saw nothing, of her.
Still as death sat Alice in her terror gazing into the sightless face of this woman, little more than two yards removed from her.
“Still as death sat Alice in her terror gazing into the sightless face of this woman.”
Suddenly this short space disappeared, and with two swift steps and an outstretched hand she stood at the bedside and caught Alice’s night-dress, and drew her forcibly towards her. Alice as violently resisted. With a loud scream she drew back, and the night-dress tore. But the tall woman instantly grasped her nearer the shoulder, and scrambling on the bed on her knees she dragged her down upon it, and almost instantly struck at her throat with a knife.
To make this blow she was compelled to withdraw one hand, and with a desperate spring, Alice evaded the stroke.
The whole thing was like a dream. The room seemed all a cloud. She could see nothing but the white figure that was still close, climbing swiftly over the bed, with one hand extended now and the knife in the other.
Not knowing how she got there, she was now standing with her back to the wall, in the further corner of the room, staring at the dreadful figure in a catalepsy of terror.
There was hardly a momentary pause. She was afraid to stir lest the slightest motion should betray her to the search of this woman. Had she, as she stood and listened sharply, heard her breathing?