ay in which he pronounced her name).

She was not in the bed, though she had apparently been there--the
clothes on her side being flung back. Thinking she might have
forgotten some kitchen detail and gone downstairs for a moment to
see to it, he pulled off his coat and idled quietly enough for a
few minutes, when, finding she did not come, he went out upon the
landing, candle in hand, and said again "Soo!"

"Yes!" came back to him in her voice, from the distant kitchen
quarter.

"What are you doing down there at midnight--tiring yourself out for
nothing!"

"I am not sleepy; I am reading; and there is a larger fire here."

He went to bed. Some time in the night he awoke. She was not there,
even now. Lighting a candle he hastily stepped out upon the landing,
and again called her name.

She answered "Yes!" as before, but the tones were small and confined,
and whence they came he could not at first understand. Under the
staircase was a large clothes-closet, without a window; they seemed
to come from it. The door was shut, but there was no lock or other
fastening. Phillotson, alarmed, went towards it, wondering if she
had suddenly become deranged.

"What are you doing in there?" he asked.

"Not to disturb you I came here, as it was so late."

"But there's no bed, is there? And no ventilation! Why, you'll be
suffocated if you stay all night!"

"Oh no, I think not. Don't trouble about me."

"But--" Phillotson seized the knob and pulled at the door. She had
fastened it inside with a piece of string, which broke at his pull.
There being no bedstead she had flung down some rugs and made a
little nest for herself in the very cramped quarters the closet
afforded.

When he looked in upon her she sprang out of her lair, great-eyed and
trembling.

"You ought not to have pulled open the door!" she cried excitedly.
"It is not becoming in you! Oh, will you go away; please will you!"

She looked so pitiful and pleading in her white nightgown against the
shadowy lumber-hole that he was quite worried. She continued to
beseech him not to disturb her.

He said: "I've been kind to you, and given you every liberty; and it
is monstrous that you should feel in this way!"

"Yes," said she, weeping. "I know that! It is wrong and wicked of
me, I suppose! I am very sorry. But it is not I altogether that am
to blame!"

"Who is then? Am I?"

"No--I don't know! The universe, I suppose--things in general,
bec