I touched her shoulder. She turned round slowly, and we looked with a certain deliberation into each other’s eyes. ‘Fanny,’ I asked, more gravely than I intended, ‘you are not frightened, are you? Nothing has happened, has it?’ She replied with emphasis, ‘Of course not! How could it--I mean, why should I?’ She stammered, as though the wrong sentence flustered her a second. ‘It’s simply--that I have this ter--this dislike of sleeping alone.’ Naturally, my first thought was how easy it would be to cut our visit short. But I did not say this. Had it been a true solution, Frances would have said it for me long ago. ‘Wouldn’t Mabel double-up with you?’ I said instead, ‘or give you an adjoining room, so that you could leave the door between you open? There’s space enough, heaven knows.’ And then, as the gong sounded in the hall below for dinner, she said, as with an effort, this thing: ‘Mabel did ask me--on the third night--after I had told her. But I declined.’ ‘You’d rather be alone than with her?’ I asked, with a certain relief. Her reply was so gravely given, a child would have known there was more behind it: ‘Not that; but that she did not really want it.’ I had a moment’s intuition and acted on it impulsively. ‘She feels it too, perhaps, but wishes to face it by herself--and get over it?’ My sister bowed her head, and the gesture made me realise of a sudden how grave and solemn our talk had grown, as though some portentous thing were under discussion. It had come of itself--indefinite as a gradual change of temperature. Yet neither of us knew its nature, for apparently neither of us could state it plainly. Nothing happened, even in our words. ‘That _was_ my impression,’ she said, ‘--that if she yields to it she encourages it. And a habit forms so easily. Just think,’ she added with a faint smile that was the first sign of lightness she had yet betrayed, ‘what a nuisance it would be--everywhere--if everybody was afraid of being alone--like that.’ I snatched readily at the chance. We laughed a little, though it was a quiet kind of laughter that seemed wrong. I took her arm and led her towards the door. ‘Disastrous, in fact,’ I agreed. She raised her voice to its normal pitch again, as I had done. ‘No doubt it will pass,’ she said, ‘now that you have come. Of course, it’s chiefly my imagination.’ Her tone was lighter, though nothing could convince me that the matter itself was light--just then. ‘And in any case,’ tightening her grip on my arm as we passed into the bright enormous corridor and caught sight of Mrs. Franklyn waiting in the cheerless hall below, ‘I’m _very_ glad you’re here, Bill, and Mabel, I know, is too.’ ‘If it doesn’t pass,’ I just had time to whisper with a feeble attempt at jollity, ‘I’ll come at night and snore outside your door. After that you’ll be so glad to get rid of me that you won’t mind being alone.’ ‘That’s a bargain,’ said Frances.