A door suddenly banged high above him. He realized that she had reached the top of the turret and burst out upon the ramparts. A very curious sensation went through him. It was almost a feeling of fear. She was such a wild little creature, and her mood was at its maddest. The chill of the place seemed to wrap him round. He felt as if icy fingers had clutched his heart. It was all a joke of course--only a joke! But jokes sometimes ended disastrously, and Toby--Toby was not an ordinary person. She was either a featherbrain or a genius. He did not know which. Perhaps there was no very clear dividing line between the two. She was certainly extraordinary. He wished he had not accepted her challenge. If he had refused to follow, she would soon have abandoned her absurd flight through the darkness. It was absurd. They had both been absurd to come to this eerie place without a light. Somehow her disappearance, the clanging of that door, had sobered him very effectually. He cursed himself for a fool as he groped his way upwards. The game had gone too far. He ought to have foreseen. And then suddenly he blundered into an iron-clamped door and swore again. Yes, this thing was beyond a joke. The door resisted him, and he wrestled with it furiously as though it had been a living thing obstructing his passage. He had begun to think that she must have bolted it on the outside when abruptly it yielded to his very forcible persuasion, and he stumbled headlong forth into the open starlight. He was out upon the ramparts, and dim wooded park-lands stretched away to the sea before his dazzled eyes. The first thing that struck him was the emptiness of the place. It seemed to catch him by the throat. There was something terrible about it. Behind him the door clanged, and the sound seemed the only sound in all that wonderful June night. It had a fateful effect in the silence--like the tolling of a bell. Something echoed to it in his own heart, and he knew that he was afraid. Desperately he flung his fear aside and moved forward to the parapet. The wall was thick, but between the battlements it was only the height of his knee. Below was depth--sheer depth--stark emptiness. He looked over and saw the stone terrace dimly lit by the stars far below him. The gardens were a blur of darkness out of which he vaguely discerned the glimmer of the lake among its trees. His heart was beating suffocatingly; he struggled to subdue his panting breath. She was somewhere close to him of course--of course. But the zest of the chase had left him. He felt dizzy, frightened, sick. He tried to raise his voice to call her, and then realized with a start of self-ridicule that it had failed him. He leaned against the parapet and resolutely pulled himself together.