It matters not whether a material presence already created can be receptive of a disembodied soul, or a soul unattached can have a body built up for it or around it; or, again, whether the body of a dead person can be made seeming quick through some diabolic influence manifested in the present, or an inheritance or result of some baleful use of malefic power in the past.

The result is the same in each case, though the ways be widely different: a soul and a body which are not in unity but brought together for strange purposes through stranger means and by powers still more strange.
Through much thought and a process of exclusions the eerie form which seemed to be most in correspondence with my adventure, and most suitable to my fascinating visitor, appeared to be the Vampire.

Doppelganger, Astral creations, and all such-like, did not comply with the conditions of my night experience.

The Wehr-Wolf is but a variant of the Vampire, and so needed not to be classed or examined at all.

Then it was that, thus focussed, the Lady of the Shroud (for so I came to hold her in my mind) began to assume a new force.