She had no feeling of awakening, but all at once the visions were gone and she lay open-eyed, swinging to the movement of the sea, feeling the night to be very long. There came over her a creeping oppression--a sense of terror of the night, of its hidden mysteries and occult forces. The darkness seemed to be holding some dreadful, stolid, lethargic thing that sprawled from horizon to horizon. A small, noiseless clock was hung beside the bed. She could see its pale face in the light of the thick ground-glass bulb that served as night-lamp. It was nearly four o'clock. She twisted back the tawny-brown surge of her hair, rose, and dressed as hastily as she could in the lurching space. Then she opened the door and passed into the saloon. A roll of the yacht slammed to the cabin door and left her in darkness. She felt for the electric switch, but before she could find it, another movement sent her reeling against a stand. She threw out her arm to stay her fall and struck something. There was a clicking sound, a soft whir, and then the music of _samisen_ filled the dark room. She realized that she had staggered against the phonograph in the corner and that the shock had started its mechanism. Wincing, she groped her way to a chair and sat down trembling. The music died away. There was a pause, a sharp click, a curious confusion of sounds, and then husky and filmy, _a human voice_: "Barbara!" She caught her hands to her throat, her blood chilling to ice. It was the voice of Austen Ware, speaking, it seemed to her, from the world beyond. She crouched back, breathing fast and hard, while the voice went on, in strange broken periods, threaded by a whir and clamor that seemed the noise of the wind outside. "What is that I knocked over? It's buzzing and wheels are turning in it--or is it the pain? Can't you stop it, Barbara? No, I know you aren't here, really. I'm all alone ... I must be light-headed. How stupid!" The strange truth came to her in a stab of realization. What she heard was no supernatural voice. In its fall that night the phonograph's spring had been released and the _samisen_ record had registered also the delirious muttering of the dying man. She felt herself shuddering violently. "I can't go any farther.... You--you've done it for me, Phil. It ... was the second blow. It seemed to crash right through...." Barbara's heart was beating to bursting. "Austen, Austen," she whispered to herself, in an agony. "Tell me! Was it _Phil_? You can't know what you're saying!" "No one must know it. The law would ... no, no! What good would it do now? He's a bad egg, but I ... I was always proud of the family name. Barbara! Remember, it _wasn't Phil_! It _wasn't Phil_!"