"Yes, little cousin, I've always been afraid of the dark."
She moved away towards the door.
"Val!" The voice seemed to fall on her naked heart, and made it shrink deliciously. "Val!"
"Yes," she said, hardly above a whisper.
Was anything else said? She never knew. She remembered nothing but groping blindly two or three steps, and then suddenly realizing that she was going towards him in the dusk with shaking, outstretched hands. For what? "Oh, God! what am I doing?" She wheeled about with a sharp inward twist of mortification. Blessing the kindly dark, she made for the door.
"Don't go!" said the voice.
"Only to get the light," she said, clinging to the door-knob, shaken into trembling from crown to toe.
"It's not dark, little cousin, while you're here."
She did not stir—nor he. The clock ticked loud. The wind had risen and was howling like a beaten hound. How curious, thought the man, vaguely, that the natural sounds of wind, or sea, or falling inland waters, or the voices of night creatures, are all sad or else discordant. Surely, surely the spirit of the world is the spirit of plaint and dole.
"Val!"