pened. I walked into the dark hall, closed
the outer door, shutting out the dull murmur of the night, and felt in
my pocket for my matchbox. It was not there. I must inadvertently have
laid it down in my dressing-room and left it. I searched about in the
darkness on the hall table, but could find no light. There was nothing
for it, then, but to feel my way upstairs as best I could.

I started, keeping my hand against the wall to guide me. I gained the
top of the stairs, and began to traverse the landing, still with my hand
upon the wall. To reach my dressing-room I had to pass the apartment
which had been my grandmother's sitting-room.

When I reached it, instead of sliding along a closed door, as I had
anticipated, my hand dropped into vacancy.

The door was wide open. It had been shut, like all the other doors
in the house, when I had descended the stairs--shut and locked, as it
always was at night-time. Why was it open now?

I paused in the darkness. And then an impulse seized me to walk forward
into the room. I advanced a step; but, as I did so, a horrible low cry
broke upon my ears out of the darkness. It came from immediately in
front of me, and sounded like an expression of the most abject fear.

My feet rooted themselves to the ground.

"Who's there?" I asked.

There came no answer.

I listened for a moment, but did not hear the minutest sound. The desire
for light was overpowering. I generally did my writing in this room,
and knew the exact whereabouts of everything in it. I knew that on the
writing-table there was a silver box containing wax matches. It lay on
the left of my desk. I moved another step forward.

There was the sound of a slight rustle, as if someone shrank back as I
advanced.

I laid my hand quickly on the box, opened it, and struck a light. The
room was vaguely illuminated. I saw something white at the far end,
against the wall. I put the match to a candle.

The white thing was Margot. She was in her dressing-gown, and was
crouched up in an angle of the wall as far away from where I stood
as possible. Her blue eyes were wide open, and fixed upon me with an
expression of such intense and hideous fear in them that I almost cried
out.

"Margot, what is the matter?" I said. "Are you ill?"

She made no reply. Her face terrified me.

"What is it, Margot?" I cried in a loud, almost harsh voice, determined
to rouse her from this horrible, unnatural silence. "What are you doing
here?"