Without waiting for permission, he springs up the stairs, and, standing on the landing, taps cautiously on the closed door, whose number (by one of those quirks of memory that furnish all our minds with insignificant facts) he has recollected. His first knock is so superfluously soft that it is evidently inaudible within, since no result follows upon it. His second, a shade louder, though still muffled by the fear of breaking into some little fitful yet salutary sleep, brings Cecilia out. His first glance at her face shows him that she has no good news, either to warm his own heart, or for him to carry down as a solace to the poor old man below. "Oh, it is you, is it?" says she, shutting the door behind her with a clumsy carefulness that makes it creak. "No, I do not think she is any better; but it is so difficult to tell, I am no judge. She does not complain of anything particular; but she looks so _odd_." It is the same adjective that Cecilia had applied earlier in the day to her sick sister, and it fills Jim with an impotent terror. "If she is asleep, might not I just look in at her?" he asks. "I do not know what you mean when you say she looks _odd_." "She is not asleep," replies Cecilia, in a noisy whisper, much more likely to pierce sick ears than a voice pitched in its normal key; "at least, I think not. But I am sure you ought not to see her; Dr. Coldstream said she was to be kept very quiet, and nothing would upset her so much as seeing you." "She need not see me; I would only take just one look at her from behind the door," persists Jim who feels a desire, whose gnawing intensity surprises himself, to be assured by the evidence of his own eyes that his poor love's face has not undergone some strange and gruesome change, such as is suggested by Cecilia's disquieting epithet. "Do you think she would not know you were there?" asks she scornfully, "Why, she hears your step three streets off!" CHAPTER XXVIII. So that night Jim does not see Amelia. After all, as Cecilia says, it is better to be on the safe side, and to-morrow she will be brighter, and he can sit by her, and tell her lovingly--oh very lovingly!--what a fright she has given him. Yes, to-morrow she will be brighter. The adjective is Cecilia's; but, apparently, he cannot improve upon it, for he not only keeps repeating it to himself as he runs downstairs, but employs it for the reassurance of Miss Wilson's anxious relatives. "She will be brighter to-morrow; sick people are always worse at night, are not they?"--rather vaguely, with again that oppressive sense of his own inexperience in illness. "Not that she is _worse_"--this is hastily subjoined, as he sees her father's face fall--"Cecilia never said she was _worse_--oh, no, not _worse_, only not distinctly better; and, after all, it would have been irrational to expect that. She will be brighter to-morrow--oh, yes, of course she will be brighter to-morrow!"