That wasn't, however, what made him silent during the meal. He took little part in the conversation except when Mr. and Mrs. Elliott plied him with questions, which he then found himself answering with only unsatisfactory vagueness--answers that he could do nothing, not even when Julia flew tenderly to his rescue, to make any better. Yes, he liked the house, he said gravely. It was a nice old house. And he thought how murky, despite its new coats of cleaning, was that far corner up near the ceiling. No, he wasn't sorry, he responded, that he had left the École des Beaux Arts to devote all his time to painting; it was the one thing he was suited for. Yes, his foreign great-grandfather had been a portrait-painter. He couldn't remember what his name was. Tremaine? Henry Tremaine. That was it. Julia was looking hard at him. She was gazing down at her plate. He knew he had eaten nothing. He could not eat. No, he wasn't at all hungry. Why was it so chilly? he thought. Doubtless he had picked up a germ. The house, he muttered to himself, was on his nerves. It was so everlastingly gloomy! Julia had reinhabited it too authentically. "Eberdeen Manor"--"Mr. Eberdeen's House." What names! An hour afterward he told Julia he was dead sleepy and that, contrary to all his habits, he was going up-stairs to take a nap. Dinner was at seven? All right, he would be in better shape by then. He felt wretchedly, but he didn't say so. Out in the hall he paused a moment at the foot of the wide lower staircase. The ticking of a good many clocks came to him from different parts of the house; they seemed to focus their monotonous activity especially on his hearing. Extraordinary recollections swept him. He remembered having heard an old nurse, Sarah Teale, describe how her aunt once rushed out the back door right in the midst of frying doughnuts, and was instantly stricken with paralysis on account of it. There was a low groaning; a moan floated to him from somewhere above. Bravely he forced himself to climb the stairs toward it. He turned the knob. The door stuck. He shook it again, and it yielded. II It was nearly dark when he awoke. A late, a very late, an unnaturally late, afternoon dusk shadowed in streaks across the floor. He could hardly breathe. The windows were close shut. The striped shades were drawn down to the sills. But he could see the yellowed print of Da Vinci's "Last Supper"--the one he had bought at Milan--hanging on the panel above the empty hearth. There was the sand-shaker on his maple desk. That old lithograph of the two kittens over beside the bureau was crooked. He must remember to straighten it. The wall-paper was getting dingy. He stretched himself. A sharp pain was going through his head. But it was late; he must get up and dress, or he wouldn't be ready in time.