He reached the bookcase, and then John suddenly lost sight of him.

The figure did not fade gradually, but went out, as it were, like the flame of a suddenly extinguished candle.
The room was now filled with the clear light of the summer morning: the whole vision had lasted but a few seconds, but my brother knew that there was no possibility of his having been mistaken, that the mystery of the creaking chair was solved, that he had seen the man who had come evening by evening for a month past to listen to the rhythm of the _Gagliarda_.

Terribly disturbed, he sat for some time half dreading and half expecting a return of the figure; but all remained unchanged: he saw nothing, nor did he dare to challenge its reappearance by playing again the _Gagliarda_, which seemed to have so strange an attraction for it.

At last, in the full sunlight of a late June morning at Oxford, he heard the steps of early pedestrians on the pavement below his windows, the cry of a milkman, and other sounds which showed the world was awake.
It was after six o'clock, and going to his bedroom he flung himself on the outside of the bed for an hour's troubled slumber..