She entered the dusky hallway and knocked at the door of the study, but no one answered. She hesitated, and drew back, and then tried the knob. The door yielded and opened, but the room was empty. In the growing dusk the corners of it were quite dark. It seemed bare, half-furnished--some books in a case, a matting, a flat littered table, a few chairs. She grasped at the sides of the open door, for the room seemed to darken and lighten alternately, and be so full of meaning as to be ghostly, seeing that no one sat at the littered table, or was even hiding, crouching in the darkened corners. The large square windows seemed to look inward rather than outward, as if the centre of interest were within, and everything outside were meaningless. Yet the room was empty. She gave a little moan of disappointment and helplessness. He must be hiding and suffering somewhere. She must protect him from the cruel, clattering noises and tongues outside! the dull, selfish, heartless people outside, to whom the prophet and martyr was forever coming and forever rejected, wounded by blind accidents, by people blind as accidents! So pitiful! so intolerable! So strange that the room should be empty of Aidee, and yet full of him! She could fancy him there, pacing the yellow matting, staring at the window, thinking, thinking. She turned back from the half-lit room to the darkened hallway, and saw that another door opened out of it at the end furthest from the door on the street. Wherever it led, he might be there.