She herself had never seen the comfortless room in which Stephen had slept and wept, but it was easy enough to imagine from what Tibbie had told her. According to Tibbie, it had had the same dirty and dead door, and the sort of upsetting floor that catches nastily at your feet. The paper had hung in mouldy festoons from the leaning walls, and in the darkest corner of all had stood the rickety, half-clothed bed. Even in summer the long, narrow place had been almost dark, and full of a trap-like effect produced by a window too small for the room. And all up and down had been scattered possessions of his mother’s, so that, whether she was in or out, the atmosphere was still Emma’s. There was an army of old clothes, for instance, which Stephen had simply loathed, because of that likeness which old clothes keep to their former wearer. Even when Emma had stopped staring and gone away, the old clothes had stared instead. Stephen had seen them swollen and swung into life by some passing breeze, or as limp and dreadful old Emmas, hanging slackly by skinny necks.... And still there was no sound or vestige of life from behind either of the dead-looking doors.... She put out her hand to knock, and dropped it again, intimidated by the silence, and fell instead to staring afresh at Stephen’s stair. Her imagination, unusually stimulated by the day’s events, presently went so far as actually to show her Stephen himself. Through the dusk his thin little hands gleamed as he tugged himself up by the dirty rail, and his thin little legs gleamed as he dragged them from step to step. His eyes travelled towards her as he reached the curve, and she nearly dropped; for it seemed to her as she looked that it was not Stephen whom she saw, but the terrified, haunted face of his little five-year-old son.... The thought of Stevie in that place frightened her so much that she was hurried into instant action, and, choosing at random, she knocked at the door on her left. Later, as nobody answered, she knocked again, and was lifting her hand a third time when a faint noise drew her round. Facing about, she discovered that the door behind her had opened without her knowledge, and that Emma was standing watching her with her Giaconda smile. “Eh, now, you did give me a start!” she remonstrated almost crossly, crimsoning with annoyance and an inexplicable sense of shame. Emma, however, did not deign to reply, but merely backed, smiling, through the kitchen door, opening it just sufficiently to allow the other to squeeze through.