"You fell fast asleep. Conscience does not keep young people, who are healthy and tired, awake," he said.
"No, but it wakes up with them," Ann returned, "and upbraids at once bitterly. I woke up rather chilly, as people do who have gone to sleep in their chairs. I was wearing a little thin frock of pale blue tulle—oh, a feather-weight of a frock! Yes, I was cold and my conscience was saying, 'Oh, big lazy one! And your letter? Where is it?'
"In a moment I was standing up and the next I was out of the room on the landing, and I was still half dazed with sleep. I closed my door behind me. It was just chance that I did it. The lights were all out on the staircase and in the hall below. The curtains were drawn across the windows. There was no moon that night. I was in a darkness so complete that I could not see the glimmer of my hand when I raised it close before my face."
Hanaud let the end of his cigarette drop at his feet. Betty had raised her face and was staring at Ann with her mouth parted. For all of them the garden had disappeared with its sunlight and its roses and its singing birds. They were upon that staircase with Ann Upcott in the black night. The swift changes of colour in her cheeks and of expression in her eyes—the nervous vividness of her compelled them to follow with her.
"Yes, Mademoiselle?" said Hanaud quietly.
"The darkness didn't matter to me," she went on, with an amazement at her own fearlessness, now that she knew the after-history of that evening. "I am afraid now. I wasn't then," and Jim remembered how the night before in the garden her eyes had shifted from this dark spot to that in search of an intruder. Certainly she was afraid now! Her hands were clenched tight upon the arms of her chair, her lips shook.
"I knew every tread of the stairs. My hand was on the balustrade. There was no sound. It never occurred to me that any one was awake except myself. I did not even turn on the light in the hall by the switch at the bottom of the stairs. I knew that there was a switch just inside the door of Betty's room, and that was enough. I think, too, that I didn't want to rouse anybody. At the foot of the stairs I turned right like a soldier. Exactly opposite to me across the hall was the door of Betty's room. I crossed the hall with my hands out in front of me," and Betty, as though she herself were crossing the hall, suddenly thrust both her hands out in front of her.
"Yes, one would have to do that," she said slowly. "In the dark—with nothing but space in front of one—— Yes!" and then she smiled as she saw that Hanaud's eyes were watching her curiously. "Don't you think so, Monsieur Hanaud?"
"No doubt," said he. "But let us not interrupt Mademoiselle."
"I touched the wall first," Ann resumed, "just at the angle of the corridor and the hall."