Mrs. Clapham, with all her varied experience of dwellings behind her, knew that there were people who made houses dark simply by living in them, and others again who seemed to fill them with a sort of hard-edged light. She knew this by the half-conscious effect which they had upon her, so that, leaving the one, she was always glad to get out again into the sun, and hurried away from the other to find a shadowed corner of her own. But the atmosphere of Emma Catterall’s had a quality that was altogether different. Going into it was less like going into a house than into the terrible lodging of some human—or, rather, dreadfully inhuman—mind. Yet the dwelling itself was extraordinary enough, in all conscience. There are some houses so curiously, almost insanely, built, that the brain simply refuses to grasp them; and others again full of some strong influence which seizes upon you as you go in. Mrs. Clapham knew of at least one abode in which, after years of scrubbing and cleaning, she still found herself unable to distinguish between the doors; and another in which, directly she got inside, she turned instinctively to mount the stairs. Emma’s house seemed to share both these idiosyncrasies after its own fashion. Not only was it thoroughly mad in construction, but it was full of some queer power. There were people who said that it was an ancient slaughter-house turned into a dwelling and even now it was neither house nor cottage. It had bulging walls and unequally placed windows, and lead spouts ornamented with strange heads; and instead of standing in line with its neighbours, it had edged its way out until it narrowed the street. There it had turned itself round to command a view of the hill, as if, like Emma herself, it must always be on the watch. From the stone steps you came to a landing with a couple of doors, while directly in front a mean little stair went creeping away from you into the dark. Both doors were closed when Mrs. Clapham arrived, and that in itself seemed rather strange. They were oak doors, apparently never polished, so that, instead of shining like mirrors, they looked dirty and dead; and Mrs. Clapham had long ago forgotten which was which. Emma might at least have left one of them ajar, she thought to herself rather indignantly, staring irresolutely from one black latch to another, as well as, almost as if fascinated, at the depressed-looking stair. It was one of those stairs which, after inviting you to ascend, suddenly dart round a corner and vanish nobody knows where. The only difference was that this stair did not dart; it barely even crept; scarcely, indeed, seemed willing to behave like a stair at all. And as Mrs. Clapham stood gazing at it, waiting for Emma to appear, she remembered the little boy who also had only crept, cold to his very bones at the thought of his spied-on bed....