“What does it mean?” she said.
Dropping the curtain behind them, he looked round at Miss Latimer. Had she just moved forward? Or for how long had she been leaning like that on the table, her head upon her arms?
“It means her,” he said. “She read your fear; she saw it. Have you had enough of it, Tony? Have you done playing with madness?”
“How could she read my fear? I was not thinking of it. I had forgotten it. It was not she. It came from something else.” She was shuddering within his arms, and her eyes, with their devouring question, were on the seated figure.
“No, it didn’t. From nothing else at all. It came from you and from me—and from her; all of us together. It was some power in her that conveyed it to our senses.”
“You, I, and she—and something else,” said Antonia. She drew away from him and went toward the fire, but so unsteadily that she had to pause and lay her hand on a chair as she went. At the table she stopped. Miss Latimer still sat fallen forward upon it. Silently Antonia stood looking at her.
“She’s asleep, I think,” said Bevis. He wished that she were dead. “It has exhausted her.”
Antonia put out her hand and touched her. “It never was like this before.—Yes,” she said, after a pause, “she is breathing very quietly. She must be asleep. And I will go now.”
She moved away swiftly; but, striding after her, he caught her at the door, seizing her hand on the lock.
“What do you want?” she said, stopping still and looking at him.