It is my habit to express my opinions audibly sometimes, when
impressions are strong enough to warrant it; but now I only sighed "Oh,
dear," as I extricated my legs from many rugs and went into the house. A
tall parlor-maid, with the bearing of a grenadier, received me, and
standing behind her was Mrs. Marsh, the housekeeper, whom I remembered
because her untidy back hair had suggested to me that it had been burnt. I went at once to my room, my hostess already dressing for dinner, but
Frances came in to see me just as I was struggling with my black tie
that had got tangled like a bootlace. She fastened it for me in a neat,
effective bow, and while I held my chin up for the operation, staring
blankly at the ceiling, the impression came--I wondered, was it her
touch that caused it?--that something in her trembled. Shrinking perhaps
is the truer word. Nothing in her face or manner betrayed it, nor in her
pleasant, easy talk while she tidied my things and scolded my slovenly
packing, as her habit was, questioning me about the servants at the
flat. The blouses, though right, were crumpled, and my scolding was
deserved. There was no impatience even. Yet somehow or other the
suggestion of a shrinking reserve and holding back reached my mind. She
had been lonely, of course, but it was more than that; she was glad that
I had come, yet for some reason unstated she could have wished that I
had stayed away. We discussed the news that had accumulated during our
brief separation, and in doing so the impression, at best exceedingly
slight, was forgotten. My chamber was large and beautifully furnished;
the hall and dining room of our flat would have gone into it with a good
remainder; yet it was not a place I could settle down in for work. It
conveyed the idea of impermanence, making me feel transient as in a
hotel bedroom. This, of course, was the fact. But some rooms convey a
settled, lasting hospitality even in a hotel; this one did not; and as I
was accustomed to work in the room I slept in, at least when visiting, a
slight frown must have crept between my eyes. "Mabel has fitted a work-room for you just out of the library," said the
clairvoyant Frances. "No one will disturb you there, and you'll have fifteen thousand books
all catalogued within easy reach. There's a private staircase too. You
can breakfast in your room and slip down in your dressing gown if you
want to." She laughed. My spirits took a turn upwards as absurdly as
they had gone down. "And how are you?" I asked, giving her a belated kiss. "It's jolly to be
together again. I did feel rather lost without you, I'll admit." "That's natural," she laughed. "I'm so glad." She looked well and had country color in her cheeks. She informed me
that she was eating and sleeping well, going out for little walks with
Mabel, painting bits of scenery again, and enjoying a complete change
and rest; and yet, for all her brave description, the word somehow did
not quite ring true. Those last words in particular did not ring true. There lay in her manner, just out of sight, I felt, this suggestion of
the exact reverse--of unrest, shrinking, almost of anxiety. Certain
small strings in her seemed over-tight. "Keyed-up" was the slang
expression that crossed my mind. I looked rather searchingly into her
face as she was telling me this. "Only--the evenings," she added, noticing my query, yet rather avoiding
my eyes, "the evenings are--well, rather heavy sometimes, and I find it
difficult to keep awake." "The strong air after London makes you drowsy," I suggested, "and you
like to get early to bed." Frances turned and looked at me for a moment steadily. "On the contrary,
Bill, I dislike going to bed--here. And Mabel goes so early." She said
it lightly enough, fingering the disorder upon my dressing table in such
a stupid way that I saw her mind was working in another direction
altogether. She looked up suddenly with a kind of nervousness from the
brush and scissors. "Billy," she said abruptly, lowering her voice, "isn't it odd, but I
hate sleeping alone here? I can't make it out quite; I've never felt
such a thing before in my life. Do you--think it's all nonsense?" And she laughed, with her lips but not with her eyes; there was a note
of defiance in her I failed to understand. "Nothing a nature like yours feels strongly is nonsense, Frances," I
replied soothingly. But I, too, answered with my lips only, for another part of my mind was
working elsewhere, and among uncomfortable things. A touch of
bewilderment passed over me. I was not certain how best to continue. If
I laughed she would tell me no more, yet if I took her too seriously the
strings would tighten further. Instinctively, then, this flashed rapidly
across me: that something of what she felt, I had also felt, though
interpreting it differently. Vague it was, as the coming of rain or
storm that announce themselves hours in advance with their hint of
faint, unsettling excitement in the air. I had been but a short hour in
the house--big, comfortable, luxurious house--but had experienced this
sense of being unsettled, unfixed, fluctuating--a kind of impermanence
that transient lodgers in hotels must feel, but that a guest in a
friend's home ought not to feel, be the visit short or long. To Frances,
an impressionable woman, the feeling had come in the terms of alarm. She
disliked sleeping alone, while yet she longed to sleep. The precise idea
in my mind evaded capture, merely brushing through me, three-quarters
out of sight; I realized only that we both felt the same thing, and that
neither of us could get at it clearly. Degrees of unrest we felt, but the actual thing did not disclose itself. It did not happen. I felt strangely at sea for a moment. Frances would interpret hesitation
as endorsement, and encouragement might be the last thing that could
help her. "Sleeping in a strange house," I answered at length, "is often difficult
at first, and one feels lonely. After fifteen months in our tiny flat
one feels lost and uncared-for in a big house. It's an uncomfortable
feeling--I know it well. And this is a barrack, isn't it? The masses of
furniture only make it worse. One feels in storage somewhere
underground--the furniture doesn't furnish. One must never yield to
fancies, though--"

Frances looked away towards the windows; she seemed disappointed a
little. "After our thickly-populated Chelsea," I went on quickly, "it seems
isolated here." But she did not turn back, and clearly I was saying the wrong thing. A
wave of pity rushed suddenly over me. Was she really frightened,
perhaps? She was imaginative, I knew, but never moody; common sense was
strong in her, though she had her times of hypersensitiveness. I caught
the echo of some unreasoning, big alarm in her. She stood there, gazing
across my balcony towards the sea of wooded country that spread dim and
vague in the obscurity of the dusk. The deepening shadows entered the
room, I fancied, from the grounds below.