My eye now rested on the table, and from under the table (which was
without cloth or cover,--an old mahogany round-table) there rose a
hand, visible as far as the wrist. It was a hand, seemingly, as much
of flesh and blood as my own, but the hand of an aged person, lean,
wrinkled, small too,--a woman's hand. That hand very softly closed on
the two letters that lay on the table; hand and letters both vanished.
There then came the same three loud, measured knocks I had heard at
the bedhead before this extraordinary drama had commenced.

As those sounds slowly ceased, I felt the whole room vibrate sensibly;
and at the far end there rose, as from the floor, sparks or globules
like bubbles of light, many colored,--green, yellow, fire-red, azure.
Up and down, to and fro, hither, thither, as tiny Will-o'-the-Wisps,
the sparks moved, slow or swift, each at its own caprice. A chair (as
in the drawing-room below) was now advanced from the wall without
apparent agency, and placed at the opposite side of the table.
Suddenly, as forth from the chair, there grew a shape,--a woman's
shape. It was distinct as a shape of life,--ghastly as a shape of
death. The face was that of youth, with a strange, mournful beauty;
the throat and shoulders were bare, the rest of the form in a loose
robe of cloudy white. It began sleeking its long, yellow hair, which
fell over its shoulders; its eyes were not turned towards me, but to
the door; it seemed listening, watching, waiting. The shadow of the
shade in the background grew darker; and again I thought I beheld the
eyes gleaming out from the summit of the shadow,--eyes fixed upon that
shape.

As if from the door, though it did not open, there grew out another
shape, equally distinct, equally ghastly,--a man's shape, a young