All the above is the analysis of one short moment. Images are to words like light to sound—incomparably swifter. And all this was really one flash of light through my mind. A comforting thought succeeded it: that both doors were locked and that really there was no danger. However, there had been that noise—the why and the how of it? Of course in the dark he might have fallen into the bath, but that wouldn’t have been a faint noise. It wouldn’t have been a rattle. There was absolutely nothing he could knock over. He might have dropped a candle-stick if Therese had left him her own. That was possible, but then those thick mats—and then, anyway, why should he drop it? and, hang it all, why shouldn’t he have gone straight on and tried the door? I had suddenly a sickening vision of the fellow crouching at the key-hole, listening, listening, listening, for some movement or sigh of the sleeper he was ready to tear away from the world, alive or dead. I had a conviction that he was still listening. Why? Goodness knows! He may have been only gloating over the assurance that the night was long and that he had all these hours to himself. I was pretty certain that he could have heard nothing of our whispers, the room was too big for that and the door too solid. I hadn’t the same confidence in the efficiency of the lock. Still I . . . Guarding my lips with my hand I urged Doña Rita to go back to the sofa. She wouldn’t answer me and when I got hold of her arm I discovered that she wouldn’t move. She had taken root in that thick-pile Aubusson carpet; and she was so rigidly still all over that the brilliant stones in the shaft of the arrow of gold, with the six candles at the head of the sofa blazing full on them, emitted no sparkle.