Howard Lovecraft - The Evil Clergyman

"You mustn't try anything more with that— thing. Nothing can be put back now. It would only make matters worse to do – or summon – anything. You are not as badly off as you might be – but you must get out of here at once and stay away. You'd better thank Heaven it didn't go further…

"I'm going to prepare you as bluntly as I can. There's been a certain change – in your personal appearance. He always causes that. But in a new country you can get used to it. There's a mirror up at the other end of the room, and I'm going to take you to it. You'll get a shock – though you will see nothing repulsive."

I was now shaking with a deadly fear, and the bearded man almost had to hold me up as he walked me across the room to the mirror, the faint lamp (i.e., that formerly on the table, not the still fainter lantern he had brought) in his free hand. This is what I saw in the glass:

A thin, dark man of medium stature attired in the clerical garb of the Anglican church, apparently about thirty, and with rimless, steel-bowed glasses glistening beneath a sallow, olive forehead of abnormal height.

It was the silent first-comer who had burned his books.

For all the rest of my life, in outward form, I was to be that man!