His hysteria of an hour before had
passed; he grew steadily calmer; but the disquieting conviction remained. A deep fear took possession of him. It was a fear for Elsie. For something in his place was inimical to her safety. Of themselves, her
two accidents might not have persuaded him of this; but she herself had
said it. "_I'm not wanted here_..." And she had declared that there was
something wrong with the place. She had seen it before he had. Well and
good. One thing stood out clearly: namely, that if this was so, she must
be kept away for quite another reason than that which had so confounded
and humiliated Oleron. Luckily she had expressed her intention of staying
away; she must be held to that intention. He must see to it. And he must see to it all the more that he now saw his first impulse,
never to set foot in the place again, was absurd. People did not do that
kind of thing. With Elsie made secure, he could not with any respect to
himself suffer himself to be turned out by a shadow, nor even by a danger
merely because it was a danger. He had to live somewhere, and he would
live there. He must return. He mastered the faint chill of fear that came with the decision, and
turned in his walk abruptly. Should fear grow on him again he would,
perhaps, take one more glass of brandy.... But by the time he reached the short street that led to the square he was
too late for more brandy. The little public-house was still lighted, but
closed, and one or two men were standing talking on the kerb. Oleron
noticed that a sudden silence fell on them as he passed, and he noticed
further that the long-nosed Barrett, whom he passed a little lower down,
did not return his good-night. He turned in at the broken gate, hesitated
merely an instant in the alley, and then mounted his stairs again. Only an inch of candle remained in the Sheffield stick, and Oleron did
not light another one. Deliberately he forced himself to take it up and
to make the tour of his five rooms before retiring. It was as he returned
from the kitchen across his little hall that he noticed that a letter lay
on the floor. He carried it into his sitting-room, and glanced at the
envelope before opening it. It was unstamped, and had been put into the door by hand. Its handwriting
was clumsy, and it ran from beginning to end without comma or period. Oleron read the first line, turned to the signature, and then finished
the letter. It was from the man Barrett, and it informed Oleron that he, Barrett,
would be obliged if Mr. Oleron would make other arrangements for the
preparing of his breakfasts and the cleaning-out of his place. The sting
lay in the tail, that is to say, the postscript. This consisted of a text
of Scripture. It embodied an allusion that could only be to Elsie
Bengough....

A seldom-seen frown had cut deeply into Oleron's brow. So! That was it! Very well; they would see about that on the morrow.... For the rest, this
seemed merely another reason why Elsie should keep away....

Then his suppressed rage broke out.... The foul-minded lot! The devil himself could not have given a leer at
anything that had ever passed between Paul Oleron and Elsie Bengough,
yet this nosing rascal must be prying and talking!... Oleron crumpled the paper up, held it in the candle flame, and then
ground the ashes under his heel. One useful purpose, however, the letter had served: it had created in
Oleron a wrathful blaze that effectually banished pale shadows. Nevertheless, one other puzzling circumstance was to close the day. As he
undressed, he chanced to glance at his bed. The coverlets bore an impress
as if somebody had lain on them. Oleron could not remember that he
himself had lain down during the day--off-hand, he would have said that
certainly he had not; but after all he could not be positive. His
indignation for Elsie, acting possibly with the residue of the brandy in
him, excluded all other considerations; and he put out his candle, lay
down, and passed immediately into a deep and dreamless sleep, which, in
the absence of Mrs. Barrett's morning call, lasted almost once round the
clock. VIII

To the man who pays heed to that voice within him which warns him that
twilight and danger are settling over his soul, terror is apt to appear
an absolute thing, against which his heart must be safeguarded in a twink
unless there is to take place an alteration in the whole range and scale
of his nature. Mercifully, he has never far to look for safeguards. Of
the immediate and small and common and momentary things of life, of
usages and observances and modes and conventions, he builds up
fortifications against the powers of darkness. He is even content that,
not terror only, but joy also, should for working purposes be placed in
the category of the absolute things; and the last treason he will commit
will be that breaking down of terms and limits that strikes, not at one
man, but at the welfare of the souls of all. In his own person, Oleron began to commit this treason. He began to
commit it by admitting the inexplicable and horrible to an increasing
familiarity. He did it insensibly, unconsciously, by a neglect of the
things that he now regarded it as an impertinence in Elsie Bengough to
have prescribed. Two months before, the words "a haunted house," applied
to his lovely bemusing dwelling, would have chilled his marrow; now,
his scale of sensation becoming depressed, he could ask "Haunted by
what?" and remain unconscious that horror, when it can be proved to be
relative, by so much loses its proper quality. He was setting aside the
landmarks. Mists and confusion had begun to enwrap him. And he was conscious of nothing so much as of a voracious
inquisitiveness. He wanted _to know_. He was resolved to know. Nothing
but the knowledge would satisfy him; and craftily he cast about for means
whereby he might attain it. He might have spared his craft. The matter was the easiest imaginable. As
in time past he had known, in his writing, moments when his thoughts
had seemed to rise of themselves and to embody themselves in words not to
be altered afterwards, so now the questions he put himself seemed to be
answered even in the moment of their asking. There was exhilaration in
the swift, easy processes. He had known no so such joy in his own power
since the days when his writing had been a daily freshness and a delight
to him. It was almost as if the course he must pursue was being dictated
to him. And the first thing he must do, of course, was to define the problem. He
defined it in terms of mathematics. Granted that he had not the place to
himself; granted that the old house had inexpressibly caught and engaged
his spirit; granted that, by virtue of the common denominator of the
place, this unknown co-tenant stood in some relation to himself: what
next? Clearly, the nature of the other numerator must be ascertained. And how? Ordinarily this would not have seemed simple, but to Oleron it
was now pellucidly clear.