He was in some one else's room. He had really no right
to be there. It was in the nature of an unwarrantable intrusion; and
while he unpacked he kept looking over his shoulder as though some one
were watching him from the corners. Any moment, it seemed, he would
hear a step in the passage, a knock would come at the door, the door
would open, and there he would see this vigorous Englishwoman looking
him up and down with anger. Worse still--he would hear her voice asking
him what he was doing in her room--her bedroom. Of course, he had an
adequate explanation, but still----! Then, reflecting that he was already half undressed, the humour of it
flashed for a second across his mind, and he laughed--_quietly_. And at
once, after that laughter, under his breath, came the sudden sense of
tragedy he had felt before. Perhaps, even while he smiled, her body lay
broken and cold upon those awful heights, the wind of snow playing over
her hair, her glazed eyes staring sightless up to the stars.... It
made him shudder. The sense of this woman whom he had never seen, whose
name even he did not know, became extraordinarily real. Almost he could
imagine that she was somewhere in the room with him, hidden, observing
all he did. He opened the door softly to put his boots outside, and when he closed
it again he turned the key. Then he finished unpacking and distributed
his few things about the room. It was soon done; for, in the first
place, he had only a small Gladstone and a knapsack, and secondly, the
only place where he could spread his clothes was the sofa. There was no
chest of drawers, and the cupboard, an unusually large and solid one,
was locked. The Englishwoman's things had evidently been hastily put
away in it. The only sign of her recent presence was a bunch of faded
_Alpenrosen_ standing in a glass jar upon the washhand stand. This, and
a certain faint perfume, were all that remained. In spite, however, of
these very slight evidences, the whole room was pervaded with a curious
sense of occupancy that he found exceedingly distasteful. One moment
the atmosphere seemed subtly charged with a "just left" feeling; the
next it was a queer awareness of "still here" that made him turn cold
and look hurriedly behind him. Altogether, the room inspired him with a singular aversion, and the
strength of this aversion seemed the only excuse for his tossing the
faded flowers out of the window, and then hanging his mackintosh upon
the cupboard door in such a way as to screen it as much as possible
from view. For the sight of that big, ugly cupboard, filled with the
clothing of a woman who might then be beyond any further need of
covering--thus his imagination insisted on picturing it--touched in him
a startled sense of the Incongruous that did not stop there, but crept
through his mind gradually till it merged somehow into a sense of a
rather grotesque horror. At any rate, the sight of that cupboard was
offensive, and he covered it almost instinctively. Then, turning out
the electric light, he got into bed. But the instant the room was dark he realised that it was more than he
could stand; for, with the blackness, there came a sudden rush of cold
that he found it hard to explain. And the odd thing was that, when he
lit the candle beside his bed, he noticed that his hand trembled. This, of course, was too much. His imagination was taking liberties
and must be called to heel. Yet the way he called it to order was
significant, and its very deliberateness betrayed a mind that has
already admitted fear. And fear, once in, is difficult to dislodge. He lay there upon his elbow in bed and carefully took note of all the
objects in the room--with the intention, as it were, of taking an
inventory of everything his senses perceived, then drawing a line,
adding them up finally, and saying with decision, "That's all the room
contains! I've counted every single thing. There is nothing more. _Now_--I may sleep in peace!" And it was during this absurd process of enumerating the furniture of
the room that the dreadful sense of distressing lassitude came over him
that made it difficult even to finish counting. It came swiftly, yet
with an amazing kind of violence that overwhelmed him softly and easily
with a sensation of enervating weariness hard to describe. And its
first effect was to banish fear. He no longer possessed enough energy
to feel really afraid or nervous. The cold remained, but the alarm
vanished. And into every corner of his usually vigorous personality
crept the insidious poison of a _muscular_ fatigue--at first--that in a
few seconds, it seemed, translated itself into _spiritual_ inertia. A
sudden consciousness of the foolishness, the crass futility, of life,
of effort, of fighting--of all that makes life worth living, shot into
every fibre of his being, and left him utterly weak. A spirit of black
pessimism that was not even vigorous enough to assert itself, invaded
the secret chambers of his heart....

Every picture that presented itself to his mind came dressed in
grey shadows: those bored and sweating horses toiling up the ascent
to--nothing! that hard-faced landlady taking so much trouble to let her
desire for gain conquer her sense of morality--for a few francs! That
gold-braided porter, so talkative, fussy, energetic, and so anxious
to tell all he knew! What was the use of them all? And for himself,
what in the world was the good of all the labour and drudgery he went
through in that preparatory school where he was junior master? What
could it lead to? Wherein lay the value of so much uncertain toil, when
the ultimate secrets of life were hidden and no one knew the final
goal? How foolish was effort, discipline, work! How vain was pleasure! How trivial the noblest life!... With a fearful jump that nearly upset the candle Minturn pulled himself
together. Such vicious thoughts were usually so remote from his normal
character that the sudden vile invasion produced a swift reaction. Yet,
only for a moment. Instantly, again, the black depression descended
upon him like a wave. His work--it could lead to nothing but the
dreary labour of a small headmastership after all--seemed as vain
and foolish as his holiday in the Alps. What an idiot he had been,
to be sure, to come out with a knapsack merely to work himself into
a state of exhaustion climbing over toilsome mountains that led to
nowhere--resulted in nothing. A dreariness of the grave possessed him. Life was a ghastly fraud! Religion childish humbug! Everything was
merely a trap--a trap of death; a coloured toy that Nature used as
a decoy! But a decoy for what? For nothing! There was no meaning in
anything. The only _real_ thing was--DEATH. And the happiest people
were those who found it soonest. _Then why wait for it to come?_

He sprang out of bed, thoroughly frightened. This was horrible.