ng in a room below.

The thought that had been willing to creep out of sight into the
back-country of his mind on that first night came out now like a red,
devouring cloud. Who was that man?

What was he dying of--or _supposed_ to be dying of? What had he been
doing that morning in Concord Street? What was he doing here, in the
house of the men who had never grown old and of the boy who would never
grow old? Why had his mother come down here, where he was, so queerly,
so secretly, so frightened?

Christopher would have liked to kill that man. He shivered and licked
his lips. He would have liked to do something bloody and abominable to
that face with the hollow cheeks, the sunken grey eyes, and the
forehead, high, sallow, and moist. He would have liked to take an ax in
his hand and run along the thundering beach and catch that face in a
corner somewhere between cliff and water. The desire to do this thing
possessed him and blinded him like the kiss of lightning.

He found himself on the floor at the edge of the moonlight, full of
weakness and nausea. He felt himself weeping as he crawled back to the
bed, his cheeks and neck bathed in a flood of painless tears. He threw
himself down, dazed with exhaustion.

It seemed to him that his mother had been calling a long while.
"Christopher! What is it? What is it, boy?"

He had heard no footsteps, going or coming; she must have been there all
the time, waiting, listening, her ear pressed to the thick, old paneling
of the door. The thought was like wine; the torment of her whispering
was sweet in his ears.

"Oh, Chris, Chris! You're making yourself sick!"

"Yes," he said. He lifted on an elbow and repeated in a voice which
must have sounded strange enough to the listener beyond the door. "Yes!"
he said. "Yes!"

"Go away!" he cried of a sudden, making a wide, dim, imperious gesture
in the dark.

"No, no," the imploring whisper crept in. "You're making yourself
sick--Christopher--all over nothing--nothing in the world. It's so
foolish--so foolish--foolish! Oh, if I could only tell you,
Christopher--if I could tell you--"

"Tell me _what_?" He shuddered with the ecstasy of his own irony. "Who
that man is? That 'caretaker'? What he's doing here? What _you're_ doing
here?--" He began to scream in a high, brittle voice: "_Go away from
that door! Go away!_"

This time she obeyed. He heard her retreating, soft-footed and
frightened, along the hall. She was abandoning him-