When I was able, I rose and walked through the house again. Again the rooms showed nothing to my flashlight except dull furniture, walls peeling here and there from long neglect, pictures of no merit and dreary subject. I had expected nothing, and I found nothing.
It was on my way upstairs to my bedroom that a sentence from the invisible lady's story came back to my mind.
"What crouches behind her, unseen? The Horror takes Its own——"
The bedroom door opened quietly under my hand. The rain had ceased and a freshening breeze came from the west, filling the room with sweet country air. The candle had burned down. While I stood there, the flame flickered out.
After a brief indecision, I made my way to the bed, rolled myself in the blankets, and laid down between the four pineapple-topped posts. This time I kept the flashlight at my hand. But almost at once I slept, and slept heavily far into a bright, windy March morning.
CHAPTER III
"Wide is the seat of the man gentle of speech."
—Instruction of Ke' Gemni.
On the second day after my return to New York, my Aunt Caroline Knox called me up on the telephone.