y on top of her gloves; she carried it to the
window and, with her limbs trembling and sending ripples down her
nightrobe, read it. Then again, standing there by the window in the
moonlight, she quivered so that her knees bent under her.

After a while she raised the window slowly and without a creak, and a
current of cool air rushed in and over her before she could reach the
bedside.

On her pillow Hattie Krakow stirred reluctantly, her weary senses
battling with the pleasant lethargy of sleep; but a sudden nip in the
air stung her nose and found out the warm crevices of the bed. She
stirred and half opened her eyes.

"For Gawd's sake, Sara, are you crazy? Put that window down! Tryin' to
freeze us out? Opening a window with her cough and all! Put it down!
Put--it--down!"

Sara Juke rose and slammed it shut, slipping back into the cold bed with
teeth that clicked. After a while she slept; but lightly, with her
mouth open and her face upturned. And after a while she woke to full
consciousness all at once, and with a cough on her lips. Her gown at
the yoke was wet; and her neck, where she felt it, was damp with cold
perspiration.

"Oh--oh--Hattie! Oh--oh!"

She burrowed under her pillow to ease the trembling that seized her. The
moon had passed on, and darkness, which is allied to fear, closed her
in--the fear of unthinking youth who knows not that the grave is full of
peace; the fear of abundant life for senile death; the cold agony that
comes in the night-watches, when the business of the day is but a dream
and Reality visits the couch.

Deeper burrowed Sara Juke, trembling with chill and night-sweat.

Drowsily Hattie Krakow turned on her pillow, but her senses were too
weary to follow her mind's dictate.

"Sara! 'Smatter, Sara? 'Smat-ter?" Hattie's tired hand crept toward her
friend; but her volition would not carry it across and it fell inert
across the coverlet. "'Smatter, dearie?"

"N-nothing."

"'Smat-ter, dear-ie?"

"N-nothing."

* * * * *

In the watches of the night a towel flung across the bedpost becomes
a gorilla crouching to spring; a tree-branch tapping at the window an
armless hand, beckoning. In the watches of the night fear is a panther
across the chest, sucking the breath; but his eyes cannot bear the light
of day, and by dawn he has shrunk to cat size. The ghastly dreams of
Orestes perished with the light; phosphorus is yellowish and waxlike by
day.