“Yes.”
“Then tell me exactly what he said.”
Violet thought a moment.
“He had gone up to bed, he told me, and, as he expected you to come and say good night to him, he didn’t put his light out, but propped himself up with pillows to keep awake. He thinks that he must have gone to sleep, though he didn’t know that he had. Then a great blackness, he said, came into the room and tried to force its way into him. He struggled and struggled, and called out to you. And then he found he was awake and you were there, and comforted him. He said you were angelic to him.”
Colin turned quickly to her.
“What do you make of it?” he said.
“I make of it what Dennis made of it. That’s simple enough, isn’t it?”
She looked at him, and saw there was something more. The notion somehow branded itself into her mind like the touch of a hot iron. There was the conviction, incredible and terrifying, that Colin had something more to do with that visitation than to bring comfort. But what?
“Tell me your side of it,” she said.
Colin’s face changed: the impatience and mockery came back.