r phrases as one gropes for objects in the dark,
telling Hamoud that henceforth nobody from outside the house was to see
David till she had been informed, that all newspapers and letters must
come first to her, that the servants must not show by so much as a
look---- She became aware that among these phrases she was uttering,
with an air of calm consideration, others that had no intelligible
meaning, no relation to her objective thoughts. She heard herself say,
"Perhaps I had better see the servants myself. It would be a queer
thing if there were a draft from the pantry. There is a red pillow in
the fernery; it must be hidden--the spears, too----" She gazed in
perplexity at Hamoud, who appeared to be floating before her at the end
of a dark tunnel.

"For how long?" he sighed.

"For how long?" she repeated plaintively.

He seemed to grow taller. His face, which had taken on a blank aspect,
resembled the faces of those who, in Oriental tales, stand waiting to
fulfil a wish too sinister to have become an audible command. In that
instant she saw all problems rushing to their solution, except one; all
treasures recaptured, except the peace of conscience. She struggled as
one might to awake from some hypnotic spell in which one has been
assailed with frightful suggestions. She sprang up and transfixed him
with a look.

"Go! Do as I say!"

He bowed and departed.

At once she became so weary that she could hardly reach her couch.

"What am I to do?" she asked herself in a lost voice.

Somewhere, no doubt, there was another Lilla, sane, able to act as well
as to think, capable of solving even this dilemma. But that other
Lilla remained far away, perhaps in the realm of those who, with an
Alexandrian gesture, ruthlessly cut the knot of interwoven scruples,
and for a brief season triumphed over the accidents of life! Raising
her eyes in despair, she saw trembling on the ceiling a ray of light
that resembled the blade of a spear.

There descended upon her the full weight of her forebodings--the
superstitious dread that was typical of her emotional defectiveness,
and that had its origin, perhaps, in those two unhappy persons who had
been her parents. Yet when she moaned, "Ah, Anna Zanidov!" it was with
an accent of reproach as keen as though the prophetess of a tragedy
must be the cause of it.

The sunshine was dissolving the luxurious room. There came to her,
like a dullness from a drug, the fancy that th