opened it, at the same time exclaiming, "I say, mater----"

Darkness and emptiness confronted him.

He shut the door rather hurriedly, and again stood considering.
Something cracked. He started, and the candle rattled in his hand. A
disagreeable sensation was stealing upon him. He would not, of course,
have acknowledged that an unpleasant feeling of loneliness, almost of
desertion. The servants slept in a small wing of the villa, shut off
from the main part of the house by double doors. Mrs. Clarke detested
hearing the servants at night, and had taken good care to make such
hearing impossible. Jimmy began to feel isolated.

Where could the mater be? And what could she be doing?

For a moment he thought of returning to his room, shutting himself in
and waiting for the dawn, which would change everything--would make
everything seem quite usual and reasonable. But something in the depths
of him, speaking in a disagreeably distinct voice, remarked, "That's
right! Be a funk stick!" And his young cheeks flushed red, although he
was alone. Immediately he went out on to the landing, thrust his feet
again into the red slippers, and boldly started down the stairs into the
black depths below. Holding the candle tightly, and trying to shuffle
with manly decision, he explored the sitting-rooms and the dining-room.
All of them were empty and dark.

Now Jimmy began to feel "rotten." Horrid fears for his mother bristled
up in his mind. His young imagination got to work and summoned up
ugly things before him. He saw his mother ravished away from him
by unspeakable men--Turks, Armenians, Greeks, Albanians--God knows
whom--and carried off to some unknown and frightful fate; he saw her
dead, murdered; he saw her dead, stricken by some sudden and horrible
illness. His heart thumped. He could hear it. It seemed to be beating
in his ears. And then he began to feel brave, to feel an intrepidity of
desperation. He must act. That was certain. It was his obvious business
to jolly well get to work and do something. His first thought was to
rush upstairs, to rouse the servants, to call up Sonia, his mother's
confidential maid, to--the pavilion!

Suddenly he remembered the pavilion, and all the books on its shelves.
His mother might be there. She might have been sleepless, might have
felt sure she couldn't sleep, and so have stayed up. She might be
reading in the darkness. She was afraid of nothing. Darkness and
solitude wouldn't hinder her fr