has been, as sure as I live,« said he; »her figure crossing your eyes
leaves on them a peculiar gleam and expression not to be mistaken.«
    »She has not been,« I persisted: for, indeed, I could deny her apparition
with truth.
    »The old symptoms are there,« he affirmed; »a particular pale, and what the
Scotch call a raised look.«
    He was so obstinate, I thought it better to tell him what I really had seen.
Of course with him, it was held to be another effect of the same cause: it was
all optical illusion - nervous malady, and so on. Not one bit did I believe him;
but I dared not contradict: doctors are so self-opinionated, so immovable in
their dry, materialist views.
    Rosine brought the shawl, and I was bundled into the carriage.
 
The theatre was full - crammed to its roof: royal and noble were there; palace
and hotel had emptied their inmates into those tiers so thronged and so hushed.
Deeply did I feel myself privileged in having a place before that stage; I
longed to see a being of whose powers I had heard reports which made me conceive
peculiar anticipations. I wondered if she would justify her renown: with strange
curiosity, with feelings severe and austere, yet of riveted interest, I waited.
She was a study of such nature as had not encountered my eyes yet: a great and
new planet she was: but in what shape? I waited her rising.
    She rose at nine that December night: above the horizon I saw her come. She
could shine yet with pale grandeur and steady might; but that star verged
already on its judgment-day. Seen near, it was a chaos - hollow, half-consumed:
an orb perished or perishing - half lava, half glow.
    I had heard this woman termed plain, and I expected bony harshness and
grimness - something large, angular, sallow. What I saw was the shadow of a
royal Vashti: a queen, fair as the day once, turned pale now like twilight, and
wasted like wax in flame.
    For awhile - a long while - I thought it was only a woman, though an unique
woman, who moved in might and grace before this multitude. By-and-by I
recognized my mistake. Behold! I found upon her something neither of woman nor
of man: in each of her eyes sat a devil. These evil forces bore her through the
tragedy, kept up her feeble strength - for she was but