Another figure had come to the tower doorway, a youth, strangely garbed. We could see him clearly: white-skinned, a young man. He stood gazing; and he saw the signal from the wall, and answered it. Behind him, the girl appeared. We could see them speak. An aspect of haste enveloped all their movements—a surreptitious haste, furtive, as though this that they were doing was forbidden.
The signal was repeated from the wall. They answered. They turned. The youth pushed the girl aside. He was stooping at the doorway, and her eager movements to help seemed to annoy him. He straightened. He had unfastened the tower door. He and the girl slid it slowly closed. It seemed very heavy. They pushed at it. The doorway closed with them inside.
We had awakened Nanette. She sat tense between us, with her long braids of thick, chestnut hair falling unheeded over her shoulders, her hands gripping each of us.
"Tell me!"
Alan said: "That door's heavy. They can't close it—yes! They've got it closed. I fancy they're barring it inside. The thing is all so silent—but you could imagine the clang of bars. I don't see the guard on the wall. It's dark over there. There's no one in sight. But, Nan, you can see that something's going to happen. See it—or feel it. Ed, look! Why—"
He broke off. Nanette's grip tightened on us.
A change had fallen upon all the scene. It seemed at first that our instrument was failing. Or that a "hole" had come, and everything momentarily was fading. But it was not that. The change was inherent to the scene itself. The tower outlines blurred, dimmed. This image of its solidarity was dissolving. Real, solid, tangible no longer. But it did not move; it did not entirely fade. It stood there, a glowing shimmering wraith of a tower, gray-white, ghostlike. A thing now of impalpable aspect, incredibly unsubstantial, imponderable, yet visible in the starlight.
The wall was gone! I realized it suddenly. The wall, and the garden and the flowers and the stream. All the background, all the surrounding details gone! The tower, like a ghost, stood ghostly and alone in a void of shapeless gray mist.
But the stars remained. The purple night, with silver stars. But even they were of an aspect somehow different. Moving visibly? For an instant I thought so.