fitful uneasy dozes, till
the brief journey had been made. After climbing to the tenth stair, and
satisfying myself that the light was there, I would creep back
noiselessly to bed, and fall at once into a deep dreamless sleep that
was often prolonged till late in the forenoon.

At length there came a night when the secret was laid bare, and the
spell broken for ever. I had been in bed for two hours and a half, lying
in that half-dreamy state in which facts and fancies are so inextricably
jumbled together that it is too much labour to disintegrate the two,
when the clock struck one. Next moment I was out of bed, standing with
the handle of the half-opened door in my hand, listening to the silence.
I had heard Sister Agnes come down some time ago, and I felt secure from
interruption. To-night the moon shone brightly in through a narrow
window in the gable, and all the way upstairs there was a track of white
light as though a company of ghosts had lately passed that way. As I
went upstairs I counted them up to the tenth, and then I stood still.
Yes, the thread of light was there as it always was, only--only somehow
it seemed broader to-night than I had ever noticed it as being before.
It _was_ broader. I could not be mistaken. While I was still pondering
over this problem, and wondering what it might mean, my eye was taken by
the dull gleam of some small white object about half way up the door. My
eyes were taken by it, and would not leave it till I had ascertained
what it really was. I approached it step by step, slowly, and then I saw
that it was in reality that which I had imagined it to be. It was a
small silver key--Sister Agnes's key--which she had forgotten to take
away with her on leaving the room. Moreover the door was unlocked,
having been simply pulled to by Sister Agnes on leaving, which explained
why the streak of light showed larger than common.

I felt as though I were walking in a dream, so unreal did the whole
business seem to me by this time. I was in a moonlight glamour; the
influence of the silver orb was upon me. Of self-volition I seemed to
have little or none left. I was given over to unseen powers, viewless,
that dwell in space, of which we have ordinarily no human cognition. At
such moments as these, and I have gone through many of them, I am no
longer the Janet Hope of everyday life. I am lifted up and beyond my
ordinary self. I obey a law whose beginning and whose ending I am alike
ignorant of: