At last, however, she stops before him. He feels the doom of her words, ere she can utter them. “Quincy,” she says, “it’s bed-time. Say good-night.” For a moment, he sits motionless. It is as if he were lost in an incongruous atmosphere, shutting in his body. But his mind has gone out before him, from the room. Vaguely, yet poignantly, he is rehearsing in his little brain the dreadful drama that lies out there--the ordeal of going up to bed. In his mind, he feels already the black loom of the house, the fitful shiver of light in the long halls, the numerous attendance, in a thousand shadows, in a thousand forms, of night’s dire beings. And although he sits there in the light-flooded room, filled as it is with those whom he knows best, he is alone already, abandoned already to mystery and terror. And those who are about him serve not at all to attenuate the presence of what acts in his mind, or to protect him from it. For this is very real. And those about him are very lifeless in their care, very vague in their reality. “Did you hear what your mother said?” These are the sole words his father has for him, all of the dinner hour. They serve to throw Quincy to his feet. He stands and looks about him. He would draw strength from these faces to meet his trial, light from them to brave the darkness. But, though his mind grasp it not and his mouth have no word for it, he knows that he has failed. Almost, escape from here is good. But there is so little choice! And his untutored heart has no law to make decision between the shadows that threaten and this light that mocks. It is the rule that he must bid “good-night” individually, to each of these persons--his family--who now direct their gaze on him with a certain prying interest, as if to gain a sensation from his antics. He feels this. He feels that to cry out or misbehave in some wild fashion as his panic prompts, would merely furnish a cordial to their repast. He feels that to rush out, branding these salutes the mockery they are, would provide a pretext for dragging out his agony. And then, it comes back to him--the prospect beyond the door--! It is an odd impulse, indeed, that would impel rushing upon _that_. For _that_ is one of those recurrent ills which his life’s reason teaches him to take, slowly, hushedly, with gritted teeth--the passage to his room. So he moves doggedly from father to Marsden, from Marsden to Marsden’s two adoring sisters, and thence to Jonas, who revels in his place beside his father. Last comes his mother. She takes him in her two hands, lifts him from his feet, embraces him sturdily, once, twice, again, as he dangles in the air. And then, turning him about, she sets him toward the door. The fervor of her message sends the child almost exultant to the stairs. It required so little to enspirit him! But at the landing, the maternal warmth wears weak and the chill gloom of the hall breaks through.