Suddenly she starts up, and there is a terror in her eyes that frightens
me as I dream, and I see great beads of sweat upon her brow. Then, very
slowly, her face changes, and I see again the evil creature of the night.
She wraps around her an old cloak, and creeps out. I hear her footsteps
going down the stairs. They grow fainter and fainter. I hear a door
open. The roar of the streets rushes up into the house, and the woman's
footsteps are swallowed up.

Time drifts onward through my dream. Scenes change, take shape, and
fade; but all is vague and undefined, until, out of the dimness, there
fashions itself a long, deserted street. The lights make glistening
circles on the wet pavement. A figure, dressed in gaudy rags, slinks by,
keeping close against the wall. Its back is towards me, and I do not see
its face. Another figure glides from out the shadows. I look upon its
face, and I see it is the face that the woman's eyes gazed up into and
worshipped long ago, when my dream was just begun. But the fairness and
the purity are gone from it, and it is old and evil, as the woman's when
I looked upon her last. The figure in the gaudy rags moves slowly on.
The second figure follows it, and overtakes it. The two pause, and speak
to one another as they draw near. The street is very dark where they
have met, and the figure in the gaudy rags keeps its face still turned
aside. They walk together in silence, till they come to where a flaring
gas-lamp hangs before a tavern; and there the woman turns, and I see that
it is the woman of my dream. And she and the man look into each other's
eyes once more.

* * * * *

In another dream that I remember, an angel (or a devil, I am not quite