the same moment a light footfall sounded on the stairs outside. It was
Sister Agnes coming back to lock the door, and to fetch the key which
she had left behind two hours before. I heard her approach the door, and
I saw the door itself pulled close to; then the key was turned, the bolt
shot into its place, the key was withdrawn, and I was left locked up
alone in that terrible room.

But the proximity of another human being sufficed to break the spell
under which I had been powerless only a minute before. Better risk
discovery, better risk everything, than be left to pass the night where
I was. Should that horror settle down upon me again, I felt that I must
succumb to it. It would crush the life out of me as infallibly as though
I were in the folds of some huge python. Long before morning I should be
dead.

I slid from off the _prie-dieu_, and walking backward, with my eyes
glancing warily to right and left, I reached the door and struck it with
my fists. "Sister Agnes!" I cried, "Sister Agnes! do not leave me. I am
here alone."

Again the curtains rustled, stirred by invisible fingers; again that
faint long-drawn sigh ran like an audible shiver through the room. I
heard eager fingers busy outside the door; a mist swam up before my
eyes, and next moment I fainted dead away in the arms of Sister Agnes.

For three weeks after that time I lay very ill--lay very close to the
edge of the grave. But for the ceaseless attentions and tender
assiduities of Sister Agnes and Dance I should have slipped out of life
and all my troubles. To them I owe it that I am now alive to write these
lines. One bright afternoon, as I was approaching convalescence, Sister