"It is all so strange. There in Dresden everything was so happy, so
undisturbed, the music and one's friends; it was all so natural. And
now--here--with Rupert and mother--it's like walking in one's sleep."

"Well, I'll walk with you," he assured her.

But indeed that was exactly what it _was_ like, he thought, as he
climbed the old and creaking stairs. How often had one dreamed of the
old dark house, the dusty latticed windows, the stairs with the gaping
boards, at last that thin dark passage into which doors so dimly opened,
that had black chasms at either end of it, whose very shadows seemed
to demand the dripping of some distant water and the shudder of some
trembling blind. In a dream too there was that sense of inevitability,
of treading unaccustomed ways with an assured, accustomed tread that
was with him now. The old woman who had conducted him stopped at a door,
hidden by the dusk, and knocked. She opened it and wheezed out--

"Mr. Dune, m'am;" and then, standing back for him to pass, left him
inside.

As the door closed he was instantly conscious of an overwhelming desire
for air, a longing to fling open the little diamond-paned window. The
ceiling was very low and a fierce fire burned in the fireplace. There
was little furniture, only a huge white bed hovered in the background.
Olva was conscious of a dark figure lying on a low chair by the fire, a
figure that gave you instantly those long white hands and those burning
eyes and gave you afterwards more slowly the rest of the outline. But
its supreme quality was its immobility. That head, that body, those
hands, never moved, only behind its dark outline the bright fire
crackled and flung its shadows upon the wall.

"I am sorry that you are not so well."

Mrs. Craven's dark eyes searched his face. "You are restful to me. I
like you to come. But I would not intrude upon your time."

Olva said, "I am very glad to come if I can be of any service. If there
is anything that I can do."

The eyes seemed the only part of her body that lived. It was the eyes
that spoke. "No, there is nothing that any one can do. I do not care for
talking. Soon I will be downstairs again, I hope. It is lonely for my
daughter."

"There is Rupert."

At the mention of the name her eyes were suddenly sheathed. It was like
the instant quenching of some light. She did not answer him.

"Tell me about yourself. What you do, what you care about . . . your
life."

He told her a litt