alone can render valuable.--Yours
truly, Hilary Maltby." I remember reading this over and wondering
whether the word "render" looked rather commercial. It was in the act
of wondering thus that I raised my eyes from the note-paper and saw,
through the bars of the brass bedstead, the naked sole of a large human
foot--saw beyond it the calf of a great leg; a nightshirt; and the face
of Stephen Braxton. I did not move.

'I thought of making a dash for the door, dashing out into the corridor,
shouting at the top of my voice for help. I sat quite still.

'What kept me to my chair was the fear that if I tried to reach the door
Braxton would spring off the bed to intercept me. If I sat quite still
perhaps he wouldn't move. I felt that if he moved I should collapse
utterly.

'I watched him, and he watched me. He lay there with his body
half-raised, one elbow propped on the pillow, his jaw sunk on his
breast; and from under his black brows he watched me steadily.

'No question of mere nerves now. That hope was gone. No mere optical
delusion, this abiding presence. Here Braxton was. He and I were
together in the bright, silent room. How long would he be content to
watch me?

'Eleven nights ago he had given me one horrible look. It was this look
that I had to meet, in infinite prolongation, now, not daring to shift
my eyes. He lay as motionless as I sat. I did not hear him breathing,
but I knew, by the rise and fall of his chest under his nightshirt,
that he was breathing heavily. Suddenly I started to my feet. For he had
moved. He had raised one hand slowly. He was stroking his chin. And
as he did so, and as he watched me, his mouth gradually slackened to a
grin. It was worse, it was more malign, this grin, than the scowl that
remained with it; and its immediate effect on me was an impulse that was
as hard to resist as it was hateful. The window was open. It was nearer
to me than the door. I could have reached it in time....

'Well, I live to tell the tale. I stood my ground. And there dawned on
me now a new fact in regard to my companion. I had all the while been
conscious of something abnormal in his attitude--a lack of ease in his
gross possessiveness. I saw now the reason for this effect. The pillow
on which his elbow rested was still uniformly puffed and convex; like
a pillow untouched. His elbow rested but on the very surface of it,
not changing the shape of it at all. His body made not the least furrow
along the b