Mark looked distressed.
“Alice, I shall not dare leave you alone again while your nerves are in this state. Do you know that there has been nothing here but spectres of your excited imagination. Since when have you conjured gruesome hobgoblins out of the darkness? You never saw such things before, did you?�
Alice hid her face in his bosom.
“Yes, Mark, many times. They are always about me. When I walk they come up behind me and I hear their padding footsteps following me. They even pull my hair sometimes at night when I cannot sleep. Oh, I cannot bear it!�
Mark frowned, and chewed his mustache reflectively, but he repressed the words that came to his lips.
“My dear child, I am home with you now.�
“Yes, Mark, and I am so—so—glad! But you will go away and then they will come again.�
“I wish you might go when I do. You are nearly ill with nervous prostration. You should see a doctor right away.�
“O, no, Mark! Not a doctor! I am not sick!�
“What has caused this trouble, Alice? I do not know unless it is that miserable hound Russell. Can you not believe me when I tell you this is all a mere delusion of the senses? You have thought and thought over, and allowed your mind to dwell upon that wretched ism until it has nearly shipwrecked you. It was an evil day when that villain darkened our door.� And Mark ground his teeth in impotent wrath. “But come, let us have a light and drive away the spirits of darkness.�