On the landing above the broad part of the staircase they paused a moment. Instead of going up the left branch, which led to Jack’s door, she took him to the right, where, at the head of the stairs, there was another door directly opposite his. As soon as he saw it he went forward quickly and turned the knob. It stuck; it was locked; and rather timorously he stepped back to meet Julia’s searching look as she handed him a rusty old key.
The musty smell poured out on them like the damp from an opened vault.
She took his hand. They stepped across the threshold.
He saw the lithograph of the two kittens, age-worn and time-blurred, still crooked on the wall beside the bureau; there was the sand-shaker on the maple desk; there hung the yellowed print of the “Last Supper” above the fireplace—all stark and ghostly in that uncannily late afternoon light, which not even the morning sun could dispel.
He clutched her hand. He looked at the bed, which hadn’t been smoothed or touched since he had lain in it a month ago. He remembered it as uncomprehendingly as one remembers mislaying a lost object in a forgotten place. He remembered waking. But the rest he had done was lost in the shadows.
“So this is where it happened—here! How have I ever been in this room before?”
“What happened?” she asked him eagerly, firmly.
“I fainted—before I was sick. But why—why here?” he begged.
She had prepared her answer; she had many times rehearsed it; but the words now served inadequately.
“You hadn’t eaten anything,” she stated softly. “You hadn’t slept. You had a fever, and your brain was so tired from—from everything that when you started for your room,—the one opposite, which I had shown to you,—you carelessly turned to the right, and came into this room instead, which I hadn’t had a chance yet to tell you about. Haven’t you ever known, since, that you did it?”