Soon, without possessing the power of this ardent creature to abolish space and meet her other self, even a stranger would have heard the foot-fall of a man upon the staircase which led down from the gallery to the parlor.
The sound of that step would have startled the most heedless being into thought; it was impossible to hear it coolly.

A precipitate, headlong step produces fear.

When a man springs forward and cries, "Fire!" his feet speak as loudly as his voice.

If this be so, then a contrary gait ought not to cause less powerful emotion.

The slow approach, the dragging step of the coming man might have irritated an unreflecting spectator; but an observer, or a nervous person, would undoubtedly have felt something akin to terror at the measured tread of feet that seemed devoid of life, and under which the stairs creaked loudly, as though two iron weights were striking them alternately.