"There is this endless anticipation--always on the dry edge of a result
that never materializes. It is torture. Mabel is at her wits' end, you
see. And when she begged me--what I felt about my sketches--I mean--"

She stammered badly as before. I stopped her. I had judged too hastily. That queer symbolism in her
paintings, pagan and yet not innocent, was, I understood, the result of
mixture. I did not pretend to understand, but at least I could be
patient. I consequently held my peace. We did talk on a little longer,
but it was more general talk that avoided successfully our hostess, the
paintings, wild theories, and him--until at length the emotion Frances
had hitherto so successfully kept under burst vehemently forth again. It had hidden between her calm sentences, as it had hidden between the
lines of her letter. It swept her now from head to foot, packed tight in
the thing she then said. "Then, Bill, if it is not an ordinary haunted house," she asked, "what
is it?" The words were commonplace enough. The emotion was in the tone of her
voice that trembled; in the gesture she made, leaning forward and
clasping both hands upon her knees, and in the slight blanching of her
cheeks as her brave eyes asked the question and searched my own with
anxiety that bordered upon panic. In that moment she put herself under
my protection. I winced. "And why," she added, lowering her voice to a still and furtive whisper,
"does nothing ever happen? If only,"--this with great emphasis--
"something would happen--break this awful tension--bring relief. It's
the waiting I cannot stand." And she shivered all over as she said it, a
touch of wildness in her eyes. I would have given much to have made a true and satisfactory answer. My
mind searched frantically for a moment, but in vain. There lay no
sufficient answer in me. I felt what she felt, though with differences. No conclusive explanation lay within reach. Nothing happened. Eager as I
was to shoot the entire business into the rubbish heap where ignorance
and superstition discharge their poisonous weeds, I could not honestly
accomplish this. To treat Frances as a child, and merely "explain away"
would be to strain her confidence in my protection, so affectionately
claimed. It would further be dishonest to myself--weak, besides--to deny
that I had also felt the strain and tension even as she did. While my
mind continued searching, I returned her stare in silence; and Frances
then, with more honesty and insight than my own, gave suddenly the
answer herself--an answer whose truth and adequacy, so far as they went,
I could not readily gainsay:

"I think, Bill, because it is too big to happen here--to happen
anywhere, indeed, all at once--and too awful!" To have tossed the sentence aside as nonsense, argued it away, proved
that it was really meaningless, would have been easy--at any other time
or in any other place; and, had the past week brought me none of the
vivid impressions it had brought me, this is doubtless what I should
have done. My narrowness again was proved. We understand in others only
what we have in ourselves. But her explanation, in a measure, I knew was
true. It hinted at the strife and struggle that my notion of a Shadow
had seemed to cover thinly. "Perhaps," I murmured lamely, waiting in vain for her to say more. "But
you said just now that you felt the thing was 'in layers', as it were. Do you mean each one--each influence--fighting for the upper hand?" I used her phraseology to conceal my own poverty. Terminology, after
all, was nothing, provided we could reach the idea itself. Her eyes said yes. She had her clear conception, arrived at
independently, as was her way. And, unlike her sex, she kept it clear, unsmothered by too many words. "One set of influences gets at me, another gets at you. It's according
to our temperaments, I think." She glanced significantly at the vile
portfolio. "Sometimes they are mixed--and therefore false. There has
always been in me, more than in you, the pagan thing, perhaps, though
never, thank God, like that." The frank confession of course invited my own, as it was meant to do. Yet it was difficult to find the words. "What I have felt in this place, Frances, I honestly can hardly tell
you, because--er--my impressions have not arranged themselves in any
definite form I can describe. The strife, the agony of vainly-sought
escape, and the unrest--a sort of prison atmosphere--this I have felt at
different times and with varying degrees of strength. But I find, as
yet, no final label to attach. I couldn't say pagan, Christian, or
anything like that, I mean, as you do. As with the blind and deaf, you
may have an intensification of certain senses denied to me, or even
another sense altogether in embryo--"

"Perhaps," she stopped me, anxious to keep to the point, "you feel it as
Mabel does. She feels the whole thing complete." "That also is possible," I said very slowly. I was thinking behind my
words. Her odd remark that it was "big and awful" came back upon me as
true. A vast sensation of distress and discomfort swept me suddenly. Pity was in it, and a fierce contempt, a savage, bitter anger as well. Fury against some sham authority was part of it. "Frances," I said, caught unawares, and dropping all pretence, "what in
the world can it be?" I looked hard at her. For some minutes neither of
us spoke. "Have you felt no desire to interpret it?" she asked presently, "Mabel
did suggest my writing something about the house," was my reply, "but
I've felt nothing imperative. That sort of writing is not my line, you
know. My only feeling," I added, noticing that she waited for more, "is
the impulse to explain, discover, get it out of me somehow, and so get
rid of it. Not by writing, though--as yet." And again I repeated my
former question:

"What in the world do you think it is?" My voice had become
involuntarily hushed. There was awe in it. Her answer, given with slow
emphasis, brought back all my reserve: the phraseology provoked me
rather:--"Whatever it is, Bill, it is not of God." I got up to go downstairs. I believe I shrugged my shoulders. "Would you
like to leave, Frances? Shall we go back to town?" I suggested this at
the door, and hearing no immediate reply, I turned back to look. Frances
was sitting with her head bowed over and buried in her hands. The
attitude horribly suggested tears. No woman, I realized, can keep back
the pressure of strong emotion as long as Frances had done, without
ending in a fluid collapse. I waited a moment uneasily, longing to
comfort, yet afraid to act--and in this way discovered the existence of
the appalling emotion in myself, hitherto but half guessed. At all costs
a scene must be prevented: it would involve such exaggeration and
overstatement. Brutally, such is the weakness of the ordinary man, I
turned the handle to go out, but my sister then raised her head.