I fear to be alone--and the night is
dark--so dark!"

A gust of wind rose slowly through the trees, like the flapping of
unseen wings, and Varia shivered. The moon was now and again obscured
under vast driving clouds; through the gloom trees massed themselves
into blots of sinister shadow. When the wind's voice died, the earth
hung silent, in suspense, so that Varia held her breath in sheer
unconscious attunement to it. In the garden she saw a black shape flying
with quick darting swoops. She knew it for a bat, but her eyes dilated
with nervous fright. It was so very still--in all the world there was
no sound at all. She glanced fearfully over her shoulder. Even the
lighted room was not reassuring; it also held the same waiting stillness
which she dared not break by so much as a sigh. Only the flame from the
perfumed lamps flickered wanly in the draught. Her wide eyes fixed
themselves upon the window, striving to pierce the mystery of the dark
without; she yielded helplessly to the sway of the vast unnamed forces
around her, a child frightened in the night. She sank upon the floor by
the window, hiding her face.

"Nerissa!" she called in a small and shaken voice, and wept, more
frightened at the little cry drowned in the tense stillness. Never had
she been so alone in her life; never so frightened. She clung to the
window, crouched as small as possible, not daring to look up.

And across the night a sound grew out of the void and came to her, and
her face blanched, and she caught at her throat with shaking hands.
Faint, elusive, coming from very far away, to be felt rather than heard,
it was now like the distant trampling of the feet of many men, now like
the rush of water over stones, now like the whisper of the wind in
trees, scarcely a thing apart from the silence which enfolded and
engulfed it. It was a voice from nowhere, warning her straining senses
of unknown and sinister things to come.

"Why, sweetheart, art hiding from me?" a voice said almost at her ear,
and Varia, taken unawares and startled out of all control, screamed
aloud and shrank lower into her corner, sobbing violently.

Marius stooped over her and took her hands away from her face.

"What is wrong?" he demanded. "Why these tears, little wife?"

"It was so dark!" Varia wailed. "And there was no sound at all, and then
there was a sound--"

She wept again, her fresh terrors submerging even her fear of him.

Marius picked her up in his arms,