I started to light the lamp. I scratched a match. It did not catch
fire, the phosphorous end breaking off. I threw it away and waited a
moment, feeling a little tired.

Then I heard a song hummed quite close to my ear.

. . . . .

Some one seemed to be leaning on my shoulder, singing for me, only for
me, in confidence.

Ah, an hallucination! Surely my brain was sick--my punishment for
having thought too hard.

I stood up, and my hand clutched the edge of the table. I was
oppressed by a feeling of the supernatural. I sniffed the air, my
eyelids blinking, alert and suspicious.

The singing kept on. I could not get rid of it. My head was beginning
to go round. The singing came from the room next to mine. Why was it
so pure, so strangely near? Why did it touch me so? I looked at the
wall between the two rooms, and stifled a cry of surprise.

High up, near the ceiling, above the door, always kept locked, there
was a light. The song fell from that star.

There was a crack in the partition at that spot, through which the
light of the next room entered the night of mine.

I climbed up on the bed, and my face was on a level with the crack.