He had passed through the gate when a voice speaking suddenly at his
side caused him to start and stop short in his walk. A moment before he
had fancied himself alone; he had heard no footsteps; and the place
from where the words came was a mere vague blur in the shadows. There
was something uncanny in the muffled approach, and the sensation it
produced on his nerves was like the shock he used to feel as a child
when his hand was unexpectedly touched in the dark.
"I beg your pardon," he said to the vague shape at the foot of a tree.
"Did you speak to me?"
The shadows divided, and what seemed to him the edge of darkness moved
forward into the dimly lighted space at his side. He saw now that it was
the figure of a woman in a long black cloak, with the dilapidated
remains of a mourning veil hanging from her small bonnet. As she came
toward him he was stirred first by an impulse of pity and immediately
afterward by a violent repulsion. In her whole figure there were the
tragic signs of poverty and desperation; but it was the horror of her
eyes, he told himself, that he should never forget.
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