So peremptory was Lady Dashwood's voice that the girl, still resting her head on the protecting shoulder, slightly opened her eyelids and saw the moonlight, the drawn curtains and the Warden standing looking back at them.
"You can see for yourself that there is nothing here," he said.
It was true, there was nothing there—there wasn't now: and for the first time Gwen was conscious of pain in her head and put up her hand. There was a lump where she had knocked it, the lump was sore.
"Why, you have hurt your head, Gwen," said Lady Dashwood. "That explains everything. A blow on the head is just the thing to make you think you see something that isn't there! Come now, we'll go upstairs and put something on that bruised head, and make it well again."
"I struck my head after I saw it," said Gwen, laying a stress upon the word "it," averting her eyes from the moonlight and rising with the help of Lady Dashwood.
"You may have thought so," said Lady Dashwood. "Come we mustn't stop here. Dr. Middleton probably has letters to write. Jim, good night. I'm sorry you have been so much disturbed, after a hard day's work."
The tone in which Lady Dashwood made her last remark and her manner in leading Gwendolen out of the library, was that of a person who has "closed" a correspondence, terminated an interview. The affair of the scream and fright was over. It was a perfectly unnecessary incident to have occurred in a sane working day, so she had apologised for its intrusion. Why Gwendolen was in the library at all was a question that was of no consequence. It certainly was not in search of a book on which to spend the midnight oil. She was there—that was all.
When they had gone, the Warden stood for some moments in the library pondering. He had shut the door. The curtains he had forgotten to pull back, and now he discovered his omission and went to the farther end of the room.
The opposite wall, the wall of the court, was just tipped with silver. Distant spires and gables were silver grey. The clouds were drifting over the city westwards, and as the moon rode higher and higher in the southern sky, so the clouds sped faster before it, and behind it lay clear unfathomable spaces in the east.
The Warden pulled the heavy curtain across the window again, and walked to the fireplace. Outside was the infinite universe—its immensity awful to contemplate! Inside was the narrow security of the lighted room in which he worked and thought and would work and think—for a few years!