observed that the window was wide open and that outside all was profound
darkness.

And filled with indescribable amazement, unwilling to believe the evidence
of her eyes, she saw what appeared to be a human figure standing
motionless in front of the window, its hands clasped and its forehead
resting against the window-frame.

A cold perspiration, like that of death, broke out over her; she would
have shuddered, but she could not; she attempted to cry out, but her voice
died away in her throat; she attempted to fly, but her feet, fastened to
the ground, refused to carry her.

With her eyes starting from their sockets, her mouth wide open, and terror
depicted on her countenance, she stood as if petrified, without the
strength to keep erect or the will to fall.

And in truth she had some reason to be terrified.

Before her stood Berta, leaning motionless against the window, drinking in
with rapt attention the notes which at that moment came in a torrent from
the piano.

It was not Berta, then, who was breaking the silence of the night with
that mysterious music.

What unknown hand, what invisible hand was it that drew those sounds from
the chords of the piano in the midst of the silence and the solitude of
the night! Was what her eyes saw real! Was what her ears were listening to
real! Or was it all the dreadful hallucination of a terrible dream!