He put on his slippers, and, gently opening the
door, crept with extreme caution up the stairs. At a long, narrow
landing window he confronted a panorama of starry night-gardens,
sloping orchards; and beyond them fields, hills, Orion, the Dogs, in
the clear and cloudless darkness. ‘My God, how beautiful!’ a voice whispered. And a cock crowed mistily
afar. He stood staring like a child into the wintry brightness of a
pastry-cook’s. Then once more he crept stealthily on. He stooped and
listened at a closed door, until he fancied that above the beating of
his own heart he could hear the breathing of the sleeper within. Then,
taking firm hold of the handle with both hands, he slowly noiselessly
turned it, and peeped in on Alice. The moon was long past her faint shining here. The blind was down. And
yet it was not pitch dark. He stood with eyes fixed, waiting. Then he
edged softly forward and knelt down beside the bed. He could hear her
breathing now: long, low, quiet, unhastening—the miracle of life. He
could just dimly discern the darkness of her hair against the pillow. Some long-sealed spring of tenderness seemed to rise in his heart with
a grief and an ache he had never known before. Here at least he could
find a little peace, a brief pause, however futile and stupid all his
hopes of the night had been. He leant his head on his hands on the
counterpane and refused to think. He felt a quick tremor, a startled
movement, and knew that eyes wide open with fear were striving to
pierce the gloom between them. ‘There, there, dearest,’ he said in a low whisper, ‘it’s only me, only
me.’ He stroked the narrow hand and gazed into the shadowiness. Her
fingers lay quiet and passive in his, with that strange sense of
immateriality that sleep brings to the body. ‘You, you!’ she answered with a deep sigh. ‘Oh, dearest, how you
frightened me. What is wrong? why have you come? Are you worse,
dearest, dearest?’

He kissed her hand. ‘No, Alice, not worse. I couldn’t sleep, that was
all.’

‘Oh, and I came so utterly miserable to bed because you would not see
me. And Mother would tell me only so very little. I didn’t even know
you had been ill.’ She pressed his hand between her own. ‘But this, you
know, is very, very naughty—you will catch cold, you bad thing. What
_would_ Mother say?’

‘I think we mustn’t tell her, dear. I couldn’t help it; I felt much I
wanted to see you. I have been rather miserable.’

‘Why?’ she said, stroking his hand from wrist to fingertips with one
soft finger. ‘You mustn’t be miserable. You and me have never done such
a thing before; have we? Was it that wretched old Flu?’

It was too dark in the little fragrant room even to see her face so
close to his own. And yet he feared. ‘Dr Simon,’ she went on softly,
‘said it was. But isn’t your voice a little hoarse, and it sounds so
melancholy in the dark. And oh’—she squeezed his wrist—‘you have grown
so thin! You do frighten me. Whatever should I do if you were really
ill? And it was so odd, dear. When first I woke I seemed to be still
straining my eyes in a dream, at such a curious, haunting face—not very
nice. I am glad, I am glad you were here.’

‘What was the dream-face like?’ came the muttered question. ‘Dark and sharp, and rather dwelling eyes; you know those long faces
one sees in dreams: like a hawk, like a conjuror’s.’

Like a conjuror’s!—it was the first unguarded and ungarbled criticism. ‘Perhaps, dear, if you find my voice different, and my hand shrunk up,
you will find my face changed, too—like a conjuror’s.... What then?’

She laughed gaily and tenderly. ‘You silly silly; I should love you
more than ever. Your hands are icy cold. I can’t warm them nohow.’

Lawford held tight his daughter’s hand. ‘You do love me, Alice? You
would not turn against me, whatever happened? Ah, you shall see, you
shall see.’ A sudden burning hope sprang up in him. Surely when all was
well again, these last few hours would not have been spent in vain. Like the shadow of death they had been, against whose darkness the
green familiar earth seems beautiful as the plains of paradise. Had he
but realized before how much he loved her—what years of life had been
wasted in leaving it all unsaid! He came back from his reverie to find
his hand wet with her tears. He stroked her hair, and touched gently
her eyelids without speaking. ‘You will let me come in to-morrow?’ she pleaded; ‘you won’t keep me
out?’

‘Ah, but, dear, you must remember your mother. She gets so anxious, and
every word the doctor says is law. How would you like me to come again
like this, perhaps?—like Santa Claus?’

‘You know how I love having you,’ she said, and stopped. ‘But—but...’
He leaned closer. ‘Yes, yes, come,’ she said, clutching his hand and
hiding her eyes; ‘it is only my dream—that horrible, dwelling face in
the dream; it frightened me so.’

Lawford rose very slowly from his knees. He could feel in the dark his
brows drawn down; there came a low, sullen beating on his ear; he saw
his face as it were in dim outline against the dark. Rage and rebellion
surged up in him; even his love could be turned to bitterness. Well,
two could play at any game! Alice sprang up in bed and caught his
sleeve. ‘Dearest, dearest, you must not be angry with me now!’

He flung himself down beside the bed. Anger, resentment died away. ‘You
are all I have left,’ he said. He stole back, as he had come, in the clear dawn to his bedroom. It was not five yet. He put a few more coals on his fire and blew out
the night-light, and lay down. But it was impossible to rest, to remain
inactive. He would go down and search for that first volume of Quain. Hallucination, Influenza, Insanity—why, Sheila must have purposely
mislaid it. A rather formidable figure he looked, descending the stairs
in the grey dusk of daybreak. The breakfast-room was at the back of the
house. He tilted the blind, and a faint light flowed in from the
changing colours of the sky. He opened the glass door of the little
bookcase to the right of the window, and ran eye and finger over the
few rows of books. But as he stood there with his back to the room,
just as the shadow of a bird’s wing floats across the moonlight of a
pool, he became suddenly conscious that something, somebody had passed
across the doorway, and in passing had looked in on him. He stood motionless, listening; but no sound broke the morning
slumbrousness, except the faraway warbling of a thrush in the first
light. So sudden and transitory had been the experience that it seemed
now to be illusory; yet it had so caught him up, it had with so furtive
and sinister a quietness broken in on his solitude, that for a moment
he dared not move. A cold, indefinite sensation stole over him that he
was being watched; that some dim, evil presence was behind him biding
its time, patient and stealthy, with eyes fixed unmovingly on him where
he stood.