The silver light of early morning was filling the room, making the various objects appear of less bright colour than usual, and giving to everything a pearl-grey neutral tint.

In this cold but clear light he saw seated in the wicker chair the figure of a man.
In the first violent shock of so terrifying a discovery, he could not appreciate such details as those of features, dress, or appearance.

He was merely conscious that with him, in a locked room of which he knew himself to be the only human inmate, there sat something which bore a human form.

He looked at it for a moment with a hope, which he felt to be vain, that it might vanish and prove a phantom of his excited imagination, but still it sat there.

Then my brother put down his violin, and he used to assure me that a horror overwhelmed him of an intensity which he had previously believed impossible.