For an instant she stands in stone, incapable of motion.
Then on her dazed senses there supervenes--so she swore--the
consciousness that some object is moving in the room--moving apparently
of its own accord--moving in direct opposition to all the laws of
nature as she knows them. She imagines that she perceives a phantasm--a
strange something--globular-white--looking, as she says, "like a
good-sized ball of cotton"--rise directly from the floor before her,
ascending slowly upward, as if driven aloft by some invisible force. A
sharp shock of the sense of the supernatural deprives her of ordered
reason. Throwing forward her arms, and uttering a shrill scream, she
rushes towards the door. But she never reaches it: midway she falls
prostrate over some object, and knows no more; and when, an hour later,
she is borne out of the room in the arms of Randolph himself, the blood
is dripping from a fracture of her right tibia.
'Meantime, in the upper chamber the pistol-shot and the scream of the
woman have been heard. All eyes turn to Randolph. He stands in the
shadow of the mechanical contrivance on which he has been illustrating
his points; leans for support on it. He essays to speak, the muscles of
his face work, but no sound comes.
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