Miss Mason seemed to want to avoid her husband's gaze, while Mr. Enriques looked earnestly at his wife and recited his wedding vows again:
"No matter in sickness or health, poverty or wealth, I will always remain by your side. Knowing you has been the greatest luck of my life."
At any other time, Miss Mason would have felt like the happiest woman in the world. But at that moment, she only wished her husband would stay quiet and stop saying anything.
But Mr. Enriques clearly could not read minds, and so he spoke the most crucial words:
"From this day forward, only death can part us. Yes, only death. Miss Maggie Mason, thank you for always loving me, for loving me since we were children. I will too—"
He could not continue. A chilling wind from nowhere swept through the entire room. The curtains that had been drawn open suddenly rustled shut without anyone touching them. The flames in the gas lamps on the walls flickered several times, then gradually went out. But the room was not plunged into darkness, because a sickly green light flared up the next moment, and the man's wraith-like soul fully appeared inside.
That green light illuminated Miss Mason's despairing face, Mr. Enriques's terrified face, Shade's grim face as he prepared to attack at any moment, and Stone Osenfott's completely expressionless face.
Perhaps it all seemed entirely without warning to Mr. Enriques, but to the other three, it was obvious that his words had provoked the soul, line by line, into its current state. Of course, the transformation into a wraith had happened far too quickly. Shade had already determined that the soul had been corrupted.
As an ordinary man, Mr. Enriques's terror was perfectly understandable. Yet he still immediately stepped in front of