white as a ghost

it had begun to be present to him after the first fortnight,

it had broken out with the oddest abruptness, this particular wanton wonderment:

it met him there--and this was the image under which he himself judged the matter,

or at least, not a little, thrilled and flushed with it--very much as he might have been met

by some strange figure, some unexpected occupant, 

at a turn of one of the dim passages of an empty house.

the quaint analogy quite hauntingly remained with him,

when he didn't indeed rather improve it by a still intenser form:

that of his opening a door behind which he would have made sure of finding nothing,

a door into a room shuttered and void, and yet so coming,

with a great suppressed start, on some quite erect confronting presence,

something planted in the middle of the place

and facing him through the dusk.

~ henry james the jolly corner

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let your little light shine

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