_The figures were still there_, and they had grown clearer, more definite, especially the countenance of each of the two wraith-like women who stood, like sentinels, one on either side of the seated man.
Blanche gazed at them fixedly for what seemed to her an eternity of time.

But even while, in a way, she could not deny the evidence of her senses, she was telling herself that she was really seeing _nothing_--that this extraordinary experience was but another exercise of Bubbles' uncanny power.
And as she, literally not believing the evidence of her senses, stared at the two immobile figures, her eyes became focussed on the face of the woman standing to Varick's right.

There was a coarse beauty in the mask-like-looking countenance, but it was a beauty now instinct with a kind of stark ferocity and rage.
At last she slowly concentrated her gaze on the other luminous figure.
Though swathed from neck to heel in what Blanche told herself, with a peculiar feeling of horror, were old-fashioned grave-clothes, the second woman yet looked more _real_, more _alive_, than the other.

Her face, if deadly pale, was less mask-like, and the small, dark eyes gleamed, while the large, ill-shaped mouth seemed to be quivering.
And then, all at once, the form to Varick's right began to dissolve--to melt, as it were, into the green-grey and blue tapestry which hung across the farther wall of the hall.
But while this curious phenomenon took place, the woman swathed in her grave-clothes remained quite clearly visible....
Suddenly Helen Brabazon started to her feet; she uttered a loud and terrible cry--and at that same moment Blanche saw the more living and sinister of the two apparitions also become disintegrated, and quickly dissolve into nothingness.
Lionel Varick leapt from his chair.

His face changed from a placid gravity to one of surprise and distress.