The words were uttered with a gasp of relief which it was not pleasant to hear. For a moment it seemed as if she might be restored to something like her proper self. Then, while she seemed to waver, without apparent rhyme or reason, all her tremors returned. Again she broke into shrieks and cries. "She's waiting for me in his room! in his room! in his room!--she's waiting for me! My God! what am I to do?--help me! help me! I'll have to go to him. Listen how he calls to me!--listen how he calls! I'm coming!--don't call so loud!" She began stumbling up the staircase, blunderingly, blindly, as if she could not see where she was going. Stopping every two or three steps, clutching at the wall, the rails; glancing back, looking as though if she could she would descend. But each time, just as she was about to beat a retreat, there came to her that insistent voice, summoning her to her fate. She gasped out expostulations even as she stumbled upwards. "Don't call so loud! don't call so loud! I'm coming." And she did come. A singular spectacle she presented as she went. No one would have recognised in that ill-shaped, mouthing, struggling woman--though she alone knew what it was with which she struggled; who seemed unable to stand up straight, and to experience as much difficulty in ascending an ordinary staircase as if it had been the scarred surface of some precipitous cliff which she was forced, very much against her will, to climb--the flamboyant and somewhat overwhelming lady who was known among a certain set in London as the handsome Mrs. Lamb. There were no traces of beauty about her then. When she had gained the landing her terror seemed, if the thing were possible, to increase. Descending to her knees, clutching the railing with both hands, she crawled, as if drawn by some invisible force, against which all the strength of her resistance was in vain, towards the room, the bedroom, in which Cuthbert Grahame had passed so much of the latter part of his life, and in which, through her action, he had died. And all the while she protested. "I won't come! I won't come!" For an instant she would cling not only with her hands, but, as it were, with her whole body, to the railings, as if she had finally resolved that nothing should constrain her to advance another inch. Then again she was possessed by a paroxysm of terror. "I will come!--don't call so loud! I am coming!" When she was in front of the door of the room she did halt for perhaps more than a minute, crouching in a heap on the floor, covering her face with her hands, overtaken by such a fury of weeping that the violence of her sobs seemed as if it would tear her to pieces. Then, as if actuated by some sudden irresistible impulse, she rose to her feet, and exclaimed, still weeping-- "Cuthbert Grahame, I hear you calling--I am here". She threw open the dead man's bedroom door. CHAPTER XXXV JUDGES