She stopped, with a wild leaping at her throat. Jethro had tumbled his burden down on one side of the humped-up bed. He drew out the knife. Pamela was close behind him. Together they traced its course. She put her shaking, twitching fingers through the close long cuts, which rent everything down to the very bed. All around the cut in the ticking were down and feathers that had puffed out. The down flew about their heads, stirred by the quick, short breaths of horror which gushed from their lungs. “She meant to kill me. I took the sheets away and slept in the guest-room. It looked rather like a body--you can see the likeness yourself: the doubled-up bolster, the blankets all heaped up under the quilt. She meant to kill me. Show her the knife.” She took it from Jethro and held it up, held it close to the stony, widely-opened eyes of the figure at the edge of the bed. But the eyes gave no sign, the mouth did not relax. “She doesn’t understand; it is no good trying to make any impression on her.” She put the knife on the dressing-table. “I’m afraid to touch her,” she said. “What an escape!” “She’s lost her reason.” He looked down sorrowfully. “You don’t care for _me_. You don’t think of my escape.” He lifted his eyes from the bed, seeming suddenly to remember. Then he pulled her to him, kissed her with all the calm restraint of last night, smoothed her hair--petted her as if she were a startled bird. But all the time his eyes were turning to the bed. He treated her tenderly--as a pet thing who had narrowly missed destruction. But any pet was less than a woman. Gainah was a woman--the wreck of the woman who had been his mother, his mentor, his tyrant all his days. His eyes dwelt sorrowfully on the bed. Pamela pushed him to the door rather pettishly. “We must get her undressed,” she said. “Egbert will be here soon. Tell Nettie to bring up a needle and thread. The tick must be sewn or we shall have the feathers all over the place.” He went away reluctantly. When Pamela was alone she sat down on the edge of the sofa. Once she shrugged her shoulders and gave a cold short laugh of terror. Only last night she had been discontented because her return to Folly Corner had lacked the elements of drama. There had been tragedy brewing for her all the while. Gainah was on her side, just as Jethro had left her. A gentle, almost imperceptible, vibration of her head was unceasing; it extended to her hands, which clutched round the edge of the blanket. She seemed to be slowly crawling back to some muffled kind of consciousness. Once, when her eyes met Pamela’s, the girl fancied that she saw a gleam of terror. In another moment she felt certain that Gainah recognized her, was abjectly afraid of her, was trying, in an agony and without the least avail, to slip down in the bed and get out of sight.