But it was another light that irradiated us as we stood waiting there—a soft bright cone that all at once spread down from the ceiling above. Up went my startled eyes as if at some trick of thaumaturgy, some imposition on my credulity. Down as if through a funnel streamed that circular shower of pale brightness, outfanning from its small orifice—the hole in the floor.
The hole in the floor! It was that to which my thoughts, following that instinctive movement of my eyes, turned like a flash. The hole in the floor! With my body still in the cellar, I seemed in some transcendental way to be upstairs at the same time, stooping over that hole as Audrey Cunningham had stooped before me. We seemed to be stooping inherently together, yet at the same time independently, so that, I was able to watch her. I saw her in my imagination pallid and hysterical, putting forth one honeysuckle finger half-way to the hole, and then, seized by a wild and baseless urge to put some torturing fancy to the test, changing her mind and putting forth another finger—the finger that bore her engagement-ring.
"If he does not come before I count a hundred he will not come at all...."
"If I thrust in that finger and anything happens I shall know what to do...."
And then her cry as the ring jammed and the finger was withdrawn without it.
But understand that all this did not take a moment, and that I was still down in the cellar, looking up at that hypnotizing cone of white light.
The glimpse suddenly vanished, and I heard Esdaile's voice. I had not heard him come down.
"Stand back a bit," he said, his hand on my sleeve.
Then it was that my eyes fell on the floor.