At that she looked for a moment as if she might break down. She said the terrible part of it was that they were left so much alone. People were beginning to shrink from him, to be afraid of him. “You know,” said Agatha, “I’m not. You must bring him to see me.” The little woman had risen, as she said, “to go to him.” She stood there, visibly hesitating. She couldn’t bring him. He wouldn’t come. Would Agatha go with her and see him? Agatha went. As they approached the farm, she saw to her amazement that the door was shut and the blinds, the ugly, ochreish yellow blinds, were down in all the nine windows of the front, the windows of the Powells’ rooms. The house was like a house of the dead. “Do you get the sun on this side?” she said; and as she said it she realized the stupidity of her question; for the nine windows looked to the east, and the sun, wheeling down the west, had been in their faces as they came. Milly answered mechanically, “No, we don’t get any sun.” She added with an irrelevance that was only apparent, “I’ve had to take all four rooms to keep other people out.” “They never come,” said Agatha. “No,” said Milly, “but if they did—” The front door was locked. Milly had the key. When they had entered Agatha saw her turn it in the lock again, slowly and without a sound. All the doors were shut in the passage, and it was dark there. Milly opened a door on the left at the foot of the steep stairs. “He will be in here,” she said. [Illustration: Milly opened the door on the left ...] The large room was lit with a thick ochreish light through the squares of its drawn blinds. It ran the whole width of the house and had a third window looking west where the yellow light prevailed. A horrible light it was. It cast thin, turbid, brown shadows on the walls. Harding Powell was sitting between the drawn blinds, alone in the black hollow of the chimney place. He crouched in his chair, and his bowed back was towards them as they stood there on the threshold. “Harding,” said Milly, “Agatha has come to see you.” He turned in his chair and rose as they entered. His chin was sunk on his chest, and the first thing Agatha noticed was the difficult, slow, forward-thrusting movement with which he lifted it. His eyes seemed to come up last of all from the depths to meet her. With a peculiar foreign courtesy he bowed his head again over her hand as he held it. He apologized for the darkness in which they found him. Harding Powell’s manners had always been perfect, and it struck Agatha as strange and pathetic that his malady should have left untouched the incomparable quality he had.