She had always known in her heart that there was no fighting Blindbeck luck, that even the dregs of it were more potent than the best of the Sandholes brand. It could hardly fail to reach even across the sea, so that one of the failures would be less of a failure than the other in the end. The trouble of being the under-dog too long is that even the dog himself begins at last to think it his rightful place. For all her dreaming and lying on Geordie’s behalf, she would have found it hard to believe in his ultimate success. Not for nothing had Eliza carefully tended her Method all this while, and watered it weekly with the Simons’ tears. At first she told herself that she would put out the light, and let the knocker knock until he was tired. Perhaps he would open the door and step inside, but the darkness would surely thrust him out again. He might even go to the foot of the stairs and call, until the silence itself put a hand upon his throat. But already the strain was more than she could bear, and each blow as it came was a blow on her own heart. She tried to move, but was afraid of the sound of her own feet, and it was only under the cover of fresh knocking that she made the effort at last. Now she was facing the door which she could not see, though she knew its panels like the palm of her hand. Behind it, she felt the knocking ring on her brain, but now she had come within range of a more persistent power than that. Plainly, through the wooden barrier that was raised between them, she felt the presence of the man who stood without. There is always an effort, a faint dread, about the opening of a door, as if the one who entered were admitted to more than a room. From each personality that enters even for a moment into one’s life something is always involuntarily received. The opening is only a symbol of the more subtle admission of the two, which leaves an intruder behind when the actual bodily presence has passed away. And of all openings there is none that includes such realisation and such risk as that which lets in the night and a stranger’s face. And then suddenly the knocking ceased, as if the knocker was now as aware of her presence as she of his. They were like enemies, crouched on either side of a barricade; or like lovers, so near and yet so far, in the last, long second before the bars are down. Each waited for a breath, a touch, a turn of the hand that would bring the flash of the final blow or the thrill of the first kiss. Their consciousness of each other was so strong that she knew at once when he lifted his arm again, just as he knew when she stirred in fear of the fresh attack. The latch gave its loose, metallic clink as she raised it and let it drop, and then the door began to open with the almost human grudging of old doors. The stranger put out a hand to help it on its way, and with a harsh shriek that sounded like protest it dragged across the flags.