ous
that a change was going on within him. Name it he could not, but
somehow it made him feel that living people like himself were standing
near, trying to speak, beckoning, anxious to bring him back into their
own particular world. The darkness was so great that he could see only
the square outline of the open window, but he felt sure that any sudden
flash of light would have revealed a group of persons round his bed with
arms outstretched, trying to reach him. The emotion they roused in him
was not fear, for he felt sure they were kind, and eager only to help
him; and the more he realised their presence, the less he thought about
the governess who had been doing so much to make his escape possible.

Then, too, voices began to sound somewhere in the air, but he could not
tell whether they were actually in the room, or outside in the night, or
only within himself--in his own head:--strange, faint voices,
whispering, laughing, shouting, crying; fragments of stories, rhymes,
riddles, odd names of people and places jostled one another with varying
degrees of clearness, now loud, now soft, till he wondered what it all
meant, and longed for the light to come.

But besides all this, something else, too, was abroad that
night--something he could not name or even think about without shaking
with terror down at the very roots of his being. And when he thought of
this, his heart called loudly for the governess, and the people hidden
in the shadows of the room seemed quite useless and unable to help.

Thus he hovered between the two worlds and the two memories, phantoms
and realities shifting and changing places every few minutes.

A little light would have saved him much suffering. If only the moon
were up! Moonlight would have made all the difference. Even a moon half
hidden and misty would have put the shadows farther away from him.

"Dear old misty moon!" he cried half aloud to himself upon the bed, "why
aren't you here to-night? My last night!"

Misty Moon, Misty Moon! The words kept ringing in his head. Misty Moon,
Misty Moon! They swam round in his blood in an odd, tumultuous rhythm.
Every time the current of blood passed through his brain in the course
of its circulation it brought the words with it, altered a little, and
singing like a voice.

Like a voice! Suddenly he made the discovery that it actually _was_ a
voice--and not his own. It was no longer the blood singing in his
veins, it was some one singing outside