“You’d better sleep in my room to-night.”
He was staring down at the place in the bed where he still saw Rosamund. Pauline couldn’t have seen anything but the bedclothes, the sheet smoothed above an invisible breast, and the hollow in the pillow. She said she’d do nothing of the sort. She wasn’t going to be frightened out of her own room. He could do as he liked.
He couldn’t leave them there; he couldn’t leave Pauline with Rosamund, and he couldn’t leave Rosamund with Pauline. So he sat up in a chair with his back turned to the bed. No. He didn’t make any attempt to go back. He says he knew she was still lying there, guarding his place, which was her place. The odd thing is that he wasn’t in the least disturbed or frightened or surprised. He took the whole thing as a matter of course. And presently he dozed off into a sleep.
A scream woke him and the sound of a violent body leaping out of the bed and thudding on to its feet. He switched on the light and saw the bedclothes flung back and Pauline standing on the floor with her mouth open.
He went to her and held her. She was cold to the touch and shaking with terror, and her jaws dropped as if she was palsied.
She said, “Edward, there’s something in the bed.”
He glanced again at the bed. It was empty.
“There isn’t,” he said. “Look.”
He stripped the bed to the foot-rail, so that she could see.
“There was something.”