by that time, so undermined was my
self-confidence, that I was not certain! And this in face of the fact
that it invariably roused Maggie as well as myself.

On the eleventh of August Miss Emily came to tea. The date does not
matter, but by following the chronology of my journal I find I can keep
my narrative in proper sequence.

I had felt better that day. So far as I could determine, I had
not walked in my sleep again, and there was about Maggie an air of
cheerfulness and relief which showed that my condition was more nearly
normal than it had been for some time. The fear of the telephone and
of the back hall was leaving me, too. Perhaps Martin Sprague's
matter-of-fact explanation had helped me. But my own theory had always
been the one I recorded at the beginning of this narrative--that I
caught and--well, registered is a good word--that I registered an
overwhelming fear from some unknown source.

I spied Miss Emily as she got out of the hack that day, a cool little
figure clad in a thin black silk dress, with the sheerest possible white
collars and cuffs. Her small bonnet with its crepe veil was faced with
white, and her carefully crimped gray hair showed a wavy border beneath
it. Mr. Staley, the station hackman, helped her out of the surrey, and
handed her the knitting-bag without which she was seldom seen. It was
two weeks since she had been there, and she came slowly up the walk,
looking from side to side at the perennial borders, then in full August
bloom.

She smiled when she saw me in the doorway, and said, with the little
anxious pucker between her eyes that was so childish, "Don't you think
peonies are better cut down at this time of year?" She took a folded
handkerchief from her bag and dabbed at her face, where there was no
sign of dust to mar its old freshness. "It gives the lilies a better
chance, my dear."

I led her into the house, and she produced a gay bit of knitting, a baby
afghan, by the signs. She smiled at me over it.

"I am always one baby behind," she explained and fell to work rapidly.
She had lovely hands, and I suspected them of being her one vanity.

Maggie was serving tea with her usual grudging reluctance, and I noticed
then that when she was in the room Miss Emily said little or nothing.
I thought it probable that she did not approve of conversing before
servants, and would have let it go at that, had I not, as I held out
Miss Emily's cup, caught her looking at Maggie. I had a s