(As if she didn't know!)

"My dear, that's all that keeps me going. I've got to make him feel that
he's protected."

"He _is_ protected," said Agatha.

Already she was drawing her charmed circle round him.

"As long as I hold out. If I give in he's done for."

"You mustn't think it. You mustn't say it!"

"But--I know it. Oh, my dear! I'm all he's got."

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 Powell's 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
realised 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.

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 h