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 bed-head 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-coloured--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 man's.
It was in the dress of the last century, or rather in a likeness of such
dress; for both the male shape and the female, though defined, were
evidently unsubstantial, impalpable--simulacra--phantasms; and there was
something incongruous, grotesque, yet fearful, in the contrast between