Page:Richard Marsh--The joss, a reversion.djvu/130

118 so utterly at peace, while I had to bear the burden all alone. She was stronger than I. Why did she not wake up?

The door came a little forward; perhaps another half-dozen inches. Again a pause; as if to ascertain if the movement had been observed. Whoever was without was cautious. Then

Then something appeared at the opening.

What I had expected to see I could not for the life of me have told. Some shape of horror, some monster born of the terror I was in; a diseased imagining of my mental, moral, physical paralysis; a creature, neither human nor inhuman, but wholly horrible, which should come stealing, resistless, in, to force me, in my agony, to welcome death.

What it was I actually saw, at first, I could not tell. It was not what I expected; that I knew. Something more commonplace; yet, considering the hour and the place, almost as strange.

When the mist had cleared from before my vision, I perceived it was a face. What kind of face even yet I could not see; the shock of the unexpected added to my confusion. It was only after it had remained quiescent for perhaps the better part of a minute that I realised it was a woman’s.

A woman’s face!

But not like any woman’s face that I had seen before. As I gazed my fear began to fade; a sense of wonder came instead. Was I asleep or waking? I asked myself the question. Were these things happening to me in a dream? Glancing at me through the partly open door was the kind of face one reads and dreams about; not the kind one meets in daily life. At least, in the daily life which I have led. I was vaguely conscious that it was beautiful; beautiful in so strange a sort; but most clearly present to my mind was the bewildering fact that it had a more wonderful pair of eyes than any I had