And the answer came back: "You're old. You're old. You're old." She was old. She felt that night eighty, a hundred.
She went to bed at last; closed her eyes and slept.
She woke suddenly; the room swam in moonlight. She had forgotten to draw her blinds. The high, blue expanse of heaven flashing with fiery stars broke the grey spaces of her room with splendour.
She lay in bed watching the stars. She was suddenly aware that a figure stood there between her bed and the thin shadowy pane. She gazed at it with no fear, but rather as though she had known it before.
It was the figure of a young girl in a white dress. Her hair was black, her face very, very young, her eyes deep and innocent, full of light. Her hands were lovely, thin and pale, shell-coloured against the starry sky.
The women looked at one another. A little unspoken dialogue fell between them.
"You are Margaret?"
"Yes."
"You have come to tell me to leave him alone?"
"Yes."