There were times when Miss Allen, relaxing her self-control, admitted without hesitation that someone was in the room. He was tall, wore spectacles behind which he scornfully peered. She challenged him to pass her guard and even felt the stiff pride of a victorious battle. They were fighting for the old lady, and she was winning....
At all other moments she scorned herself for this weakness. Mrs. Porter's nerves had affected her own. She had not believed that she could be so weak. Then, suddenly, one evening Mrs. Porter dropped her cards, crumpled down into her chair, screamed, "No, no ... Lucy!... Lucy! He's here!..."
She was strangely, at the moment of that cry, aware of no presence in the room. It was only when she had gathered her friend into her arms, persuading her that there was nothing, loving her, petting her, that she was conscious of the dimming of the light, the stealthy withdrawal of sound. She was facing the fireplace; before the mantelpiece there seemed to her to hover a shadow, something so tenuous that it resembled a film of dust against the glow of electric light. She faced it with steady eyes and a fearless heart.
But against her will her soul admitted that confrontation. From that moment Mrs. Porter abandoned disguise. Her terror was now so persistent that soon, of itself, it would kill her. There was no remedy; doctors could not help, nor change of scene. Only if Miss Allen still saw and felt nothing could the old lady still hope. Miss Allen lied and lied again and again.
"You saw nothing, Lucy?"
"Nothing."
"Not there by the fireplace?"
"Nothing, dear.... Of course, nothing!"
Events from then moved quickly, and they moved for Miss Allen quite definitely in the hardening of the sinister shadow. She led now a triple existence: one life was Mrs. Porter's, devoted to her, delivered over to her, helping her, protecting her; the second life was her own, her rational, practical self, scornful of shadow and of the terror of death; the third was the struggle with Henry Porter, a struggle now as definite and concrete as though he were a blackmailer confining her liberty.
She could never tell when he would come, and with every visit that he paid he seemed to advance in her realisation of him. It appeared that he was always behind her, staring at her through those glasses that had, she was convinced, large gold rims and thin gold wires. She fancied that she had before her a dim outline of his face—pale, the chin sharp and pointed, the ears large and protuberant, the head dome-shaped and bald. It was now that, with all her life and soul in the struggle for her friend, she realised that she did not love her enough. The intense love of her life had been already in earlier years given. Mrs. Porter was a sweet old lady, and Miss Allen would give her life for her—but her soul was atrophied a little, tired a little, exhausted perhaps in the struggle so sharp and persistent for her own existence.