lmost instantly.
Lewis lit a pipe; the vague forebodings he had felt in the morning
had returned to him, only increased tenfold. He felt an unaccountable
physical discomfort, an inexplicable sensation of uneasiness. Then he
realised what it was. He felt there was someone in the house besides
themselves, someone or something that was always behind him, moving when
he moved and watching him. He walked into the _impluvium_, but heard
nothing and saw nothing. There were none of the thousand little sounds,
such as the barking of a dog, or the hoot of a night-bird, which
generally complete the silence of a summer night. Everything was
uncannily still. He returned to the room. He would have given anything
to be back on the yacht, for besides the physical sensation of
discomfort and of the something watching him he also felt the
unmistakable feeling of impending danger that had been with him nearly
all day.

He lay down and at last fell into a doze. As he dozed he heard a subdued
noise, a kind of buzzing, such as is made by a spinning wheel or a
shuttle on a loom, and more strongly than ever he felt that he was being
watched. Then all at once his body seemed to grow stiff with fright. He
saw someone enter the room from the _impluvium_. It was a dim, veiled
figure, the figure of a woman. He could not distinguish her features,
but he had the impression that she was strangely beautiful; she was
bearing a cup in her hands, and she walked towards Stewart and bent over
him, offering him the cup.

Something in Lewis prompted him to cry out with all his might: "Don't
drink! Don't drink!" He heard the words echoing in the air, just as he
had heard the voice in the boat; he felt that it was imperative to call
out, and yet he could not: he was paralysed; the words would not come.
He formed them with his lips, but no sound came. He tried with all his
might to rise and scream, and he could not move. Then a sudden cold
faintness came upon him, and he remembered no more till he woke and
found the sun shining brightly. Stewart was lying with his eyes closed,
moaning loudly in his sleep.

Lewis tried to wake him. He opened his eyes and stared with a fixed,
meaningless stare. Lewis tried to lift him from the platform, and then a
horrible thing happened. Stewart struggled violently and made a snarling
noise, which froze the blood in Lewis's veins. He ran out of the house
with cold beads of sweat on his forehead. He ran through the wood to
the