She slept without dreams but woke suddenly as though she had been flung
into the midst of one. She sat up in bed, knowing from the thumping of
her heart that she was seized with panic but finding, in the first
flash, no reason for her alarm. The room was pitch black with shadows
of light here and there, but she had with her, in the confusion of her
sleep, uncertainty as to the different parts of the room. What had
awakened her? Of what was she frightened? Then suddenly, as one slits a
black screen with a knife, a thin line of light cracked the darkness.
As though some one had whispered it in her ear she knew that the door
was there and the dark well of uncertainty into which she had been
plunged was suddenly changed into her own room where she could
recognise the window, the chest of drawers, the looking-glass, the
chairs. Some one was opening her door and her first thought that it was
of course her father was checked instantly by the knowledge, conveyed
again as though some one had whispered to her, that her father was dead.

The thin line of light was now a wedge, it wavered, drew back to a
spider's thread again, then broadened with a flush of colour into a
streaming path. Some one stood in the doorway holding a candle. Maggie
saw that it was Uncle Mathew in his shirt and trousers.

"What is it?" she said.

He swayed as he stood there, his candle making fantastic leaps and
shallows of light. He was smiling at her in a silly way and she saw
that he was drunk. She had had a horror of drunkenness ever since, as a
little girl, she had watched an inebriated carter kicking his wife. She
always, after that, saw the woman's bent head and stooping shoulders.
Now she knew, sitting up in bed, that she was frightened not only of
Uncle Mathew, but of the house, of the whole world.

She was alone. She realised her loneliness in a great flash of
bewilderment and cold terror as though the ground had suddenly broken
away from her and she was on the edge of a vast pit. There was no one
in the house to help her. Her father was dead. The cook and the maid
were sunk in heavy slumber at the other end of the house. There was no
one to help her. She was alone, and it seemed to her that in the shock
of that discovery she realised that she would always be alone now, for
the rest of her life.

"What is it, Uncle Mathew?" she said again. Her voice was steady,
although her heart hammered. Some other part of her brain was wondering
where