Her arms were stretched out, barring the passage. Oh yes, he saw her face, Rosamund’s face; I gathered that it was utterly sweet, and utterly inexorable. He couldn’t pass her.
So he turned into his own room, backing, he says, so that he could keep looking at her. And when he stood on the threshold of his own door she wasn’t there.
No, he wasn’t frightened. He couldn’t tell me what he felt; but he left his door open all night because he couldn’t bear to shut it on her. And he made no other attempt to go in to Pauline; he was so convinced that the phantasm of Rosamund would come again and stop him.
I don’t know what sort of excuse he made to Pauline the next morning. He said she was very stiff and sulky all day; and no wonder. He was still infatuated with her, and I don’t think that the phantasm of Rosamund had put him off Pauline in the least. In fact, he persuaded himself that the thing was nothing but a hallucination, due, no doubt, to his excitement.
Anyhow, he didn’t expect to see it at the door again the next night.
Yes. It was there. Only, this time, he said, it drew aside to let him pass. It smiled at him, as if it were saying, “Go in, if you must; you’ll see what’ll happen.”
He had no sense that it had followed him into the room; he felt certain that, this time, it would let him be.
It was when he approached Pauline’s bed, which had been Rosamund’s bed, that she appeared again, standing between it and him, and stretching out her arms to keep him back.
... stretching out her arms to keep him back.