Visions: A Phantasy

FOR a long time I tried in vain to sleep and kept tossing from side to side. “The devil take all this nonsense of tipping tables,” I said to myself, “it certainly shakes the nerves.” At length, however, drowsiness began to get the upper hand. Suddenly it seemed to me that a harp-string twanged feebly in my chamber. I lifted my head. The moon was low in the sky and shone full in my face; its light lay like a chalk-mark on the carpet. The strange sound was distinctly repeated. I raised myself on my elbow, my heart beat forcibly. A minute passed so— another—then in the distance a cock crowed and a second answered him from yet further. My head fell back on the pillow. “It comes even to that,” I thought, “my ears are fairly ringing.” In a moment more I was asleep, or seemed to myself to be sleeping. I had a singular dream. I thought that I was in my own chamber, in my own bed, wide awake. Suddenly I hear the noise again. I turn. The moonbeam on the floor begins to waver, to rise, to take shape, stands motionless before me like the white figure of a woman, transparent as mist.