But he was
studying her face, trying to read the exact meaning of each little
familiar quirk of expression around the mouth and eyes. She looked very
contained, but that was only a mask, he thought. Actually, in spite of
everything she said, she must still be poised close to the brink of
her obsession. One little push, such as a few careless words on his
part--How the devil had he ever let himself get so enmeshed in his own
worries and those ridiculous projections of his own cranky imagination? Here was the only thing that mattered--the mind behind this smooth
brown forehead and these clear, gray-green eyes; to steer that mind
away from any such ridiculous notions as those he had been indulging
in, the last few days. "To tell the truth," he said, "I _have_ been worried about you. I thought it would hurt your self-confidence if I let you know. Maybe
I was unwise--you seem to have sensed it, anyway--but that's what I
thought. The way you feel now, of course, it can't possibly hurt you to
know." It occurred to him that it was easier to lie convincingly when you
loved someone, provided the lie were for that person's sake. She did not give in at once. "Are you sure?" she said. "I still have
the feeling there's more to it." Suddenly she smiled and yielded to the pressure of his arm. "It must be
the MacKnight in me--my Scotch ancestry," she said laughing. "Awfully
stubborn, you know. Monomaniacs. When we're crazy on a thing, we're
completely crazy, but when we drop it, we drop it all at once. Like
my great-uncle Peter. You know, the one who left the Presbyterian
ministry and gave up Christianity on the very same day he proved to his
satisfaction there was no God. He was seventy-two at the time." There was a long and grumbling roll of thunder. The storm was swinging
back. "Well, I'm very glad you're only worried about me," she continued. "It's complimentary, and I like it." She was smiling happily, but there was still something enigmatic
about the eyes, something withheld. As he was congratulating himself
on carrying it off successfully, it suddenly occurred to him that
two could play at the game of lying. She might be holding something
back herself, with the idea of reassuring him. She might be trying to
protect him from her own blacker worries. Her subtlety might undercut
his own. No sane reason to suspect that, and yet--

"Suppose I get us a drink," she said, "and we decide whether or not you
leave Hempnell this year, and look for greener fields." He nodded. She started around the bend in the L-shaped room for the
sideboard.

" --and yet, you could live with a person and love a person for fifteen
years, and not know what was behind their eyes." *       *       *       *       *

There was the rattle of glassware, and the friendly sound of a full
bottle set down on a table. Then, timed to the thunder, but much, much closer, a shuddering, animal
scream of anguished fear. It was cut off before Norman had sprung to
his feet. As he cleared the angle of the room, he saw Tansy going through the
kitchen door. She was a little ahead of him down the back steps. Light fanned out from the windows of the opposite house into the
service yard. It revealed the sprawled body of Totem, head mashed flat
against the concrete. He heard a little sound start and stop in Tansy's throat. It might have
been a gasp, or a sob, or a snarl. The light revealed a little more than the body. He moved so that his
feet covered the two prominent scuffs in the concrete just beyond the
body. They might have been caused by the impact of a brick or heavy
stone, perhaps the thing that had killed Totem, but there was something
so suggestive about their relative position that he did not want
Tansy's imagination to have a chance to work on them. She lifted her face. She was never one to show much emotion. "You'd better go in," he said. "You'll--"

He nodded. "Yes." She stopped halfway up the stairs. "That was a rotten, rotten thing for
anybody to do." "Yes. We'll try to find out who." She left the door open. A moment later she came out and laid on the
porch railing a square of heavy cloth, covered with shed hair. Then
she went in again and shut the door. He rolled up the cat's body and stopped at the garage for the spade. He did not spend time searching for any brick or heavy stone or other
missile. Nor did he examine closer the heavy footmarks he fancied he
saw in the grass beyond the service yard. Lightning began to flicker as his spade bit into the soft ground by
the back fence. He kept his mind strictly on the task at hand. He
worked steadily, but without undue haste. When he patted down the last
spadeful of earth and started for the house, the lightning flashes were
stronger, making the moments in between even darker. A wind had started
up and was dragging at the leaves. He did not hurry. What if the lightning did indistinctly show him a
large dog near the house toward the front? There were several large
dogs in the neighborhood. They were not savage. Totem had not been
killed by a dog. Deliberately he replaced the spade in the garage and walked back to the
house. Only when he got inside and looked back through the screen did
his thoughts break loose for a moment. The lightning flash, brightest yet, showed the dog coming around the
corner of the house. He had only a glimpse. A gray dog who walked
stiff-legged. He quickly closed the door and shot home the bolt. Then he remembered that the study windows were open. He must close
them. Quickly. It might rain in. When Norman entered the living room his face was composed. Tansy was
sitting in the straight chair, leaning a little forward, an intent
moody expression around her eyes. Her hands were playing absently with
a bit of twine. He carefully lit a cigarette. "Do you want that drink now?" he asked, not too casually, not too
sharply. "No, thanks. You have one." Her hands kept on knotting and unknotting
the twine. He sat down and picked up his book. From the easy-chair he could watch
her unobtrusively. And now that he had no grave to dig or other mechanical task to
perform, his thoughts were not to be denied. But at least he could keep
them circling in a little isolated sphere inside his skull, without
affecting either the expression of his face or the direction of his
other thoughts, which were protectively focused on Tansy. "Sorcery _is_," went the thoughts inside the sphere. "Something
has been conjured down from a roof. Women are witches fighting for
their men. Tansy was a witch. She was guarding you. But you made her
stop." "In that case," he replied swiftly to the thoughts inside the sphere,
"why isn't Tansy aware of what's happening? It can't be denied that she
has acted very relieved and happy." "Are you sure she isn't aware or becoming aware?" answered the thoughts
inside the sphere. "Besides, in losing her weapons, she has lost
her sensitivity, which had probably declined in acuteness through
familiarity.