. There were servants: apparently they had not
stirred. It was almost as if this stranger's permanence was accepted by
the household. A long, long time had slipped by.

The man at length, making an almost fierce effort, partly dominated the
unreasoning sense of horror which possessed him. He opened the gate,
stepped into the garden, and made his way slowly and softly toward the
house door. But suddenly he stopped. Through the unshuttered window of
his sitting-room, the room in which for years he had spent much of his
time, in which he had concocted many schemes to throw dust in the
eyes of his neighbors, and even of his own relatives, in which he had
learned very perfectly to seem what he was not, and to hide what he
really was, he perceived the figure of a man. It crossed the lighted
space slowly, and disappeared with a downward movement. He knew it was
the man he had been following and whom he had seen enter his house.

For a long while he remained where he was on the path of the garden.
The night deepened about him. A long way off, at the other end of the
village, a clock chimed the hours. In the cottages the lights were
extinguished. The few loungers disappeared from the one long street
vanishing over the snow. And the man never moved. A numb terror possessed
him. Yet, despite his many faults and his life of evil, he had never been
physically a coward. Always the light shone steadily from the window of
his study, making a patch of yellow upon the snow. Always the occupant
of the room must be seated tranquilly there, like an owner. For no figure
had risen, had repassed across the unshuttered space.

The man told himself again and again that he must go forward till
he gained the window, that he must at least look into the room; if he
dared not enter the house to confront the intruder, to demand an
explanation. But again and again something within him, which seemed to
be a voice from the innermost chamber of his soul, whispered to him not
to go, whispered to him to leave the intruder alone, to let the intruder
do what he would, but not to approach him, above all, not to look upon
his face. And the man obeyed the voice till a thing happened which roused
in him a powerful beast, called by many the natural man.

He saw his wife, whom he loved in his way, though he had tricked and
deceived her again and again, cross the window space, smiling, and
disappear with a downward movement, as the other had disappeared. Then
she