I found relief for my somewhat childish indignation by letting myself loose upon the organ then. The flood of Bach and Beethoven brought back the sense of proportion. It proved, however, at the same time that there _had_ been this growth of distortion in me, and that it had been provided apparently by my closer contact--for the first time--with that funereal personality, the woman who, like her master, believed that all holding views of God that differed from her own, must be damned eternally. It gave me, moreover, some faint clue perhaps, though a clue I was unequal to following up, to the nature of the strife and terror and frustrate influence in the house. That housekeeper had to do with it. She kept it alive. Her thought was like a spell she waved above her mistress’s head. VII That night I was wakened by a hurried tapping at my door, and before I could answer, Frances stood beside my bed. She had switched on the light as she came in. Her hair fell straggling over her dressing-gown. Her face was deathly pale, its expression so distraught it was almost haggard. The eyes were very wide. She looked almost like another woman. She was whispering at a great pace: ‘Bill, Bill, wake up, quick!’ ‘I _am_ awake. What is it?’ I whispered too. I was startled. ‘Listen!’ was all she said. Her eyes stared into vacancy. There was not a sound in the great house. The wind had dropped, and all was still. Only the tapping seemed to continue endlessly in my brain. The clock on the mantelpiece pointed to half-past two. ‘I heard nothing, Frances. What is it?’ I rubbed my eyes; I had been very deeply asleep. ‘Listen!’ she repeated very softly, holding up one finger and turning her eyes towards the door she had left ajar. Her usual calmness had deserted her. She was in the grip of some distressing terror. For a full minute we held our breath and listened. Then her eyes rolled round again and met my own, and her skin went even whiter than before. ‘It woke me,’ she said beneath her breath, and moving a step nearer to my bed. ‘It was the Noise.’ Even her whisper trembled. ‘The Noise!’ The word repeated itself dully of its own accord. I would rather it had been anything in the world but that--earthquake, foreign cannon, collapse of the house above our heads! ‘The noise, Frances! Are you _sure_?’ I was playing really for a little time. ‘It was like thunder. At first I thought it _was_ thunder. But a minute later it came again--from underground. It’s appalling.’ She muttered the words, her voice not properly under control. There was a pause of perhaps a minute, and then we both spoke at once. We said foolish, obvious things that neither of us believed in for a second. The roof had fallen in, there were burglars downstairs, the safes had been blown open. It was to comfort each other as children do that we said these things; also it was to gain further time.