Uneasy, Wrzesmian returned the blind to its position and tried to fall asleep. In vain. His imagination, imbued with dread, tormented him terribly. It was already morning before he finally fell into a short, nervous sleep, and even then it was one full of nightmares and visions. When he woke up around noon, with a giddy head, his first thought was to look at the villa’s windows. He breathed a sigh of relief: the obstinate face was gone.

Throughout the day there was peace. But at evening he saw, by a window on the first floor, the mask of a woman staring at him, her streaming hair bordering a face already withered but with traces of her former beauty, a face maddened by a pair of wild, intense eyes. And she was looking at him through frenzied pupils with the same severe gaze as her companion from the right wing. Both seemed unaware of their coexistence in the strange house. They were joined only by their menacing gesture directed toward Wrzesmian … .

And again after a sleepless night, interrupted by looking at his persecutors, a day free of masks followed. But as soon as dusk was entering into its secret conspiracy with the night, a third new figure appeared by another window and it also did not retreat until dawn. In the space of several days all the windows of the villa were filled up with sinister faces. From behind every window looked out a pair of despairing eyes, or ovals marked with suffering and madness. The house gazed at him with the eyes of maniacs, the grimace of lunatics; it grinned toward him with the smile of the demented. Not one of these people had he seen in his life, and yet all of them were somehow known to him. But he knew not from where. Each one of them had a different expression, but all were united in their threatening demeanour; apparently he was considered a common enemy. Their hatred was terrifying, yet mesmerizing. And, strangely enough, in the deepest layers of his mind, he understood their anger and acknowledged its justness.

And they, as if fathoming him from afar, gathered certainty of expression, and their masks became more severe with every day.

Then one August night, while he was leaning out of his window, enduring the crucifying gazes of their hateful eyes, the immobile faces suddenly became animated; in each flashed simultaneously the same will. Hundreds of pale, thin hands raised themselves in a movement of command, and scores of bony fingers made beckoning motions … .

Wrzesmian understood: he was being summoned inside. As if hypnotized he leaped over the windowsill, crossed the narrow street, jumped over the railing, and began to walk along the alley to the villa … .

It was four in the morning, the hour before dawn’s tremblings. The magnesium jets of the moon bathed the house in a silver whirlpool, luring long shadows from its curves. The path was a dazzling white in the midst of sorrowful shrub walls. The hollow echo of Wrzesmian’s steps reverberated on the stone slabs, as the fountains rippled quietly and their bent waters drizzled with unsolved mystery … . He went up the terrace and jerked strongly on the door handle: the door gave way. He walked along a lengthy corridor of two rows of Corinthian columns. The darkness brightened the glory of the moon, whose beams, pouring through a stained-glass panel at the end of the gallery, unreeled green fables onto porphyritic floor tiles … .

Suddenly, as he was walking, a figure emerged from behind the shaft of a column and followed him. Wrzesmian shuddered but silently went on. A couple of steps further a new figure detached itself from a niche between two columns; then a third, and a fourth…a tenth – all followed him. He wanted to turn back, but they blocked his way.