V.
As the day wore on, I grew restless and uneasy; ill at ease and dissatisfied.
So after dinner I went for a long walk along the country roads. When I returned my wife was asleep. I lay down softly beside her, and, tired out by my long walk, was soon asleep myself.
Asleep, I dreamed. Dreamed of Toi Wah and Toi Wah’s kitten. And I heard again, in my sleep, the plaintive cry of the cat mother as she called anxiously and lovingly for her kitten that would never return.
So vivid and so real was the dream that I awoke with a cry of the cat in my ears. And as I awoke, I seemed to hear it again—plaintive, subdued, a half-cat, half-human cry, as if a woman had cried aloud and then quickly suppressed the cry.
And my wife was gone!
I sprang up hastily. The moonlight was streaming through the window. It was almost as light as day. She was nowhere in the room.
I went swiftly down the hall and descended the stairs, making no noise with my bare feet. The door of my grandmother’s room was open. I looked in. Two luminous eyes, with a greenish tinge, glowed out at me from the semi-darkness of the far corner.
For an instant my heart stood still, and then raced palpitatingly on. I took a deep breath and went toward the unknown thing with glowing eyes that crouched in that corner.
As I reached the pool of moonlight in the center of the room, I heard a gasp of fear, a sudden movement, and my wife fled past me, out of the room and up the stairs.