“I couldn’t tell, mister. Jesus!--how could I tell? The man looked all right. What we got to fear, usual, ’cept somethin’ lyin’ loose gets swiped? I wasn’t gone a minute.” I felt sorry for him. I nodded. “I come back. An’ he was standin’ there. His hat in his hand. A funny guy, he seemed then: like no mechanic. Sort o’ seemed I hadn’t seen him before. I tells him: ‘Nothin’ doin’.’ I wasn’t gone a minute. He nods. Puts on his hat. Lights out.” “What did he look like?” The man writhed in the effort of search and of articulation. “He was funny lookin’. Didn’t look like no mechanic. I dunno. The light ain’t much, you see, on the floor. He was dressed dark-like ... and ... I dunno ... seems sort o’ like his head, it was white.” _o_ I am in my room. My watch says 1.30. The smoke of Doctor Stein’s pipe lingers like the fume of a spent flame that was the life of sun and stars and earth. All of my room is the echo of a song. It is outside me, but my senses wistfully can touch it. I touch my body, taking off my clothes. My body has the flavor to my senses, not of the real but of the reminiscent. I lie in bed. The white sheets fold about me like a dream. I switch off the lamp: blackness moves dense upon me and within me: and the light that is gone dwells in my memory like a light of fancy. I shut my eyes. This twisted horror, life ... Philip murdered and my parents murdered, Mildred grimacing their death with her fairness, they with their horror swarming upon Mildred.... I cannot meet it with my mind. I am sunk in this twisted terror. Naught is outside me for my mind to meet, save the voice that came from the worn throat of Mrs. Landsdowne: “What are you doing?... But you must go on.... When to-morrow takes its place beyond to-day, you will know. And I will help you know.” A flowing water, the promise of her words. I plunge in it. I lie in it, I sleep.... PART TWO THE OTHER ROOM _a_ The house stands on the height of a mountain. I am aware of the mountain more than of the house. The room in which I am, in which we are, has a door that opens on a narrow hall: and at the hall’s end there is another room. That is the whole of the house. Along the room’s length there are three French windows giving upon a roofless porch: and the slope of the mountain starts down from the porch.