"So with that house and the atmosphere in it. Something was happening there. Something so strong and so actual that it defied all appearances, all the ordinary influences that might be supposed to act on the imagination of, say, a sensitive, hysterical, under-occupied woman. For as a matter of fact there was nothing morbid in the look of the house—nothing at all. It was sunny and fresh and painted. It was clean and dry. But it ought not to have been. No ... I've sat there, late afternoons, when it seemed to me if I touched the walls they'd be damp and the woodwork rotted and mouldy. The boards should have creaked there and the stair-rails ought to have given under the hand—but they didn't. I had them all repaired, you see! But there were a few things I hadn't had the chance to repair and they ... oh, well, they were there, that was all.
"There? You'd have said so, any of you, if you'd seen Althea as I saw her one morning. I stepped into the kitchen suddenly, to give an order for some beef-tea I wanted to take away with me, and there she sat, cross-legged on the clean floor, a red silk scarf twined around her shoulders and—of all things—a red and blue kerchief twisted into a turban on her head. She was rocking back and forth and singing, and I give you my word, I was as shocked as if I'd seen my own mother in that rig, swaying there!
"She turned her head as I came in and I saw that she had big blue glass earrings in her ears.
"And all of a sudden it came to me—what was happening there: I felt very queer for a moment, I tell you! Everything seemed to be rolling backward, like one of those cinematograph things, reversed. Not I—I swear nothing touched me. I was the same. So was the jeweller. So was the parson. So was the man before that...
"'Althea,' I said roughly, 'what are you doing there? Take those rags off you! Get up immediately! I am ashamed of you.'
"Her eyes met mine for a moment, glittering like a savage's—it was nip and tuck between us there: she might have thrown a plate at me. But she didn't; I won. You see, she was not a young woman, and unusually controlled for one of her race, and she owed me a good deal, besides.
"'I'm thoroughly ashamed of you,' I repeated.
"She staggered up and burst into hoarse, frightened sobbing.
"''Fore God, I am, too, doctor!' she cried and stumbled into her pantry, shaking and muttering. I waited till she came back, and she was quiet and trim again—herself. She stuffed a bundle into the stove before my eyes, and I don't think she ever met my look again. She was a good woman, Althea was.
"But the other—Mynie—well, the game was up with her. Heavens, the change in that girl's eyes! It wasn't that they were bold, it wasn't that they were beautiful, nor even that they were conscious of it. No, it was more than that—more and worse and deeper and older— Oh, as old as Hell! That look unsettled ... disorganized ... how shall I put it? The flimsiness of civilisation, the essential bedrock of animalism—the big, ceaseless undertow of things ... anyway, it was all in that girl's eyes and it touched that spring in poor George that Nature has coiled in every one of us. The Old Lady wound us up with that spring and she daren't let it run down, you see."