The Invader: A NovelWoods, Margaret L. (Margaret Louisa)
General
The Invader: A Novel
Woods, Margaret L. (Margaret Louisa)
Multiple personality -- Fiction
She had not long left the room when the slumberer's eyes opened
gradually and stared with the fixity of semi-consciousness at a stem of
blossoming jessamine in the wall-paper. Then she slowly stretched her
arms above her head until some inches of wrist, slight and round and
white, emerged from the strictly plain night-gown sleeve. So she lay,
till suddenly, almost with a start, she pulled herself up and looked
about her. The gaze of her wide-open eyes travelled questioningly around
the quiet-toned room which two windows at right angles to each other
still kept light with the reflection of a yellow winter sunset. She
pushed the bedclothes down, dropped first one bare white foot, then the
other to the ground and looked doubtfully at a pair of worn felt
slippers which were placed beside the bed, before slipping her feet into
them. With the same air as of one assuming garments which do not belong
to her, she put on the faded blue flannel dressing-gown. Then she walked
to the southern window. None of the glories of Oxford were visible from
it; only the bare branches of trees through which appeared a huddle of
somewhat sordid looking roofs and the unimposing spire of St. Aloysius.
With the same air, questioning yet as in a dream, she turned to the
western window, which was open. Below, in its wintry dulness, lay the
garden of the College, bounded by an old gray wall which divided it from
the straggling street; beyond that, a mass of slate roofs. But a certain
glory was on the slate roofs and all the garden that was not in shadow.
For away over Wytham, where the blue vapor floated in the folds of the
hills, blending imperceptibly with the deep brown of the leafless woods,
sunset had lifted a wide curtain of cloud and showed between the gloom
of heaven and earth, a long straight pool of yellow light.
She leaned out of the window. A mild fresh air which seemed to be
pouring over the earth through that rift in heaven which the sunset had
made, breathed freshly on her face and the yellow light shone on her
amber hair, which lay on her shoulders about the length of the hair of
an angel in some old Florentine picture.
Miss Burt in galoshes and with a wrap over her head was coming up the
garden. She caught sight of that vision of gold and pale blue in the
window and smiled and waved her hand to Milly Flaxman. The vision
withdrew, trembling slightly as though with cold, and closed the
window.
Tims came in, carrying a boiled egg and a plate of bread and butter.
Tims put down the egg-cup and the plate on the table before she relaxed
the wrinkle of carefulness and grinned triumphantly at her patient.
"Well, old girl," she asked; "what do you say to hypnotism now? Put
_you_ to sleep, right enough, anyhow. Know what time it is?"
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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