"'And I haven't been so much better off, neither,' said Severin.
"'When I got back here to Berlin the other day,' said Marzell, 'I took a nice, comfortable, well-furnished room in Friedrich Strasse. Like Alexander, I was tired to death when I threw myself into bed; but I had hardly been asleep for an hour or so when I became aware of something like a bright light shining on my closed eyelids. I opened my eyes--and, fancy my horror--close beside my bed stood a tall, attenuated figure, with a face as pale as death, and frightfully distorted, staring at me fixedly with glassy-looking spectral eyes! A white shirt was hanging from the shoulders of this figure, so that its breast was bare, and seemed to be bloody. In its left hand it had a branched candlestick, with two lighted wax candles; and in its right, a tall glass full of water. Speechlessly, I kept my eyes riveted on this spectral being as it began swinging the lights and the glass in wide circles, uttering horrible, whimpering sounds as it did so. Like Alexander, I was seized by "ghost terror." Slower and slower the spectre swung the lights and the water-glass, till they came to a stop. Then I fancied I could hear a sort of low, whispering singing in the room, and, with a curious sardonic sort of laugh, the figure went slowly away, out of the door. It was long before I could summon up courage to get up and hurriedly bolt the door, which I found I had neglected to do the night before when I went to bed. Often and often, when I was serving in the field, I have found some stranger standing beside me when I awoke; but that never frightened me at all, so that I was firmly persuaded there was something supernatural about the affair in this instance. Well, I was going downstairs next morning to talk to the landlady about what had happened in the night. As I came out on to the landing the opposite door opened and a tall attenuated figure, muffled up in a white dressing-gown, came out meeting me. At the first glance I recognized the deadly white face and the sunken, glassy eyes I had seen at my bedside in the night. And, although I knew, now, that, if the ghost appeared again it was kickable, still, I felt a sort of echo of the terror which had been on me in the night, and was starting off downstairs as fast as I could. But the individual barred my passage, took me politely by the hand and said, in a kindly manner, with a good-tempered smile on his face: