After a long while she moved in her seat, her body pained with its long, stiff pose, and after she had stared at her own hands and had stretched them on the top of the table and turned them about, searching for some sign or recognition, she arose and stood beside Lethe’s chair where it had been pushed roughly back and overturned. It was a token of Lethe’s going. Lethe was gone. The knife was gone. She walked to the door and looked out, up and down the quiet street, but the church was dark now and the houses were shut and quiet. Once she called “Lethe!” from the doorway, but there was no answer and she heard no footfalls anywhere in the dark. When she came back to the room again Americy was caressing Stig with a deeply amorous intent and he had ceased to cry out his taunts after Lethe’s going. He was laughing in a hideous way, returning Americy’s caresses. She stopped before them, standing before the bed where they sat. “Come on now, Stig, and go with me. It’s time to go now,” she said. “Me, I don’t aim to go,” he said. “I don’t live in stable no more.” “Come on, Stig. It’s time to go now.” “I live along with Americy.” He laughed uncertainly, unable to talk farther. “Americy,” she said. “Don’t you know what Stig is? Stig’s your brother. Wake up and know what I say. Your brother.” “I’m your sister,” Americy mumbled as if she were asleep. “I always knowed I was your sister.” “And Stig’s our brother. Our brother.” Their replies were not articulated. Stig’s response became a low, monstrous laughter, falling rhythmically, like the bleat of some great animal, pleading laughter, crying to be appeased. Americy had fallen into a semi-sleep. Theodosia stood over them, trying to awaken Americy, calling to her, drawing at her arm. But Americy clung the closer to Stig and Theodosia came swiftly away. * * * * * It was late when she reached her room, near midnight. She sat on the edge of her bed staring at the wall, looking with horror at what she had left in Lethe’s cabin. Lethe had gone somewhere in the dark with the knife in her strong hand, and she would plunge the knife into hated flesh. Her hand would feel the dull resistance of human bone and it would rain up and down, stabbing deeper with each blow, letting out the blood, tearing through flesh until her hate had eased itself. She looked at the two, Lethe and Americy, and their two ways met and became one horror that dazed her mind and drowsed her eyes so that, moving back from it, she sank quickly into a deep sleep. She lay in the heart of evil and slept all the night, lying as if she had been drugged, uncovered to the cool air that came in at the open windows. She lay on the outside of the bed, as she had first fallen, deeply shut into sleep, and the chill damp air that came with a dense fog at dawn did not appraise her of anything, nor did the ringing of the morning angelus.