The dragging weight must have left my feet as I sprang forward ...

but it is all confused! And the whole thing lasted only a minute.
In that minute I had seen what I would have sworn was not human.

Even while I knew It for the little old man with the umbrella, I had no sense of its humanness.

Something bent above the bed--the old man's face was there, the thin figure, the white hair, and yet it seemed the wildest absurdity to call the Fury who wore them by any human name.
The eyes looked at me--eyes without depth or meaning--eyes like bits of blue steel reflecting the light of Tophet--, incarnate evil, blazing, peering ...

I caught a glimpse of long, thin hands, like claws, around the folded umbrella, a flash of something bright at the ferrule ...