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At that instant some person tried the latch of the door. I hastened
to prevent an intrusion, and then immediately returned to my dying
antagonist. But what human language can adequately portray that
astonishment, that horror which possessed me at the spectacle then
presented to view? The brief moment in which I averted my eyes had been
sufficient to produce, apparently, a material change in the arrangements
at the upper or farther end of the room. A large mirror,--so at first it
seemed to me in my confusion--now stood where none had been perceptible
before; and, as I stepped up to it in extremity of terror, mine own
image, but with features all pale and dabbled in blood, advanced to meet
me with a feeble and tottering gait.
Thus it appeared, I say, but was not. It was my antagonist--it was
Wilson, who then stood before me in the agonies of his dissolution.
His mask and cloak lay, where he had thrown them, upon the floor. Not
a thread in all his raiment--not a line in all the marked and singular
lineaments of his face which was not, even in the most absolute
identity, mine own!
It was Wilson; but he spoke no longer in a whisper, and I could have
fancied that I myself was speaking while he said:
"
You have conquered, and I yield. Yet, henceforward art thou also
dead--dead to the World, to Heaven and to Hope! In me didst thou
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