The house grew emptier and emptier of furniture; Sylvia found it so hard to obtain any money from her father for current expenses that she was often hungry. She did not like to write to any of her older sisters, because she was afraid that Valentine would make it appear that she was in the wrong and trying to stir up trouble. Summer passed into autumn, and with the lengthening darkness the house became unbearably still; neither her father nor her sister was ever at home; even the clocks had now all disappeared. Sylvia could not bear to remain indoors; for in her nervous, hungry state old childish terrors were revived, and the great empty loft at the top of the house was once again inhabited by that one-legged man with whose clutches her mother used to frighten her when naughty long ago. There recurred, too, a story told by her mother on just such a gusty evening as these, of how, when she first came to Lille, she had found an armed burglar under her bed, and of how the man had been caught and imprisoned. Even her mother, who was not a nervous woman, had been frightened by his threats of revenge when he should be free again, and once when she and her mother were sewing together close to the dusky window her mother had fancied she had seen him pass the house, a large pale man in a dark suit. Supposing he should come back now for his revenge? And above all these other terrors was the dread of her mother's ghost. Sylvia took to going out alone every evening, whether it rained or blew, to seek in the streets relief from the silence of the desolate house. Loneliness came to seem to her the worst suffering imaginable, and the fear of it which was bred during these months haunted her for years to come. In November, about half past eight of a windy night, Sylvia came back from one of her solitary walks and found her father sitting with a bottle of brandy in the kitchen. His face was haggard; his collar was loose; from time to time he mopped his forehead with a big blue handkerchief and stared at himself in a small cracked shaving-glass that he must have brought down from his bedroom. She asked if he were ill, and he told her not to worry him, but to go out and borrow a railway time-table. When Sylvia returned she heard Valentine's angry voice in the kitchen, and waited in the passage to know the cause of the dispute. "No, I won't come with you," Valentine was saying. "You must be mad! If you're in danger of going to prison, so much the worse for you. I've got plenty of people who'll look after me." "But I'm your stepfather." Valentine's laugh made Sylvia turn pale. "Stepfather! Fine stepfather! Why, I hate you! Do you hear? I hate you! My man is waiting for me now, and he'll laugh when he hears that a convict wants his step-daughter to go away with him. My mother may have loved you, but I'd like her to see you now. _L'amour de sa vie. Son homme! Sa poupée, sa poupée! Ah, mais non alors! Sa poupée!"_