six weeks, and I thought him looking tired and queer--ragged
and scattered about the face, if you know what I mean, and his manner
worn out. He said he had been writing hard, but his inspiration had
somehow failed him, and he was dissatisfied with his work. His sense of
humour was leaving him, or changing into something else, he said. There
was something in the house, he declared, that"--she emphasised the
words--"prevented his feeling funny."

"Something in the house that prevented his feeling funny," repeated the
doctor. "Ah, now we're getting to the heart of it!"

"Yes," she resumed vaguely, "that's what he kept saying."

"And what was it he _did_ that you thought strange?" he asked
sympathetically. "Be brief, or he may be here before you finish."

"Very small things, but significant it seemed to me. He changed his
workroom from the library, as we call it, to the sitting-room. He said
all his characters became wrong and terrible in the library; they
altered, so that he felt like writing tragedies--vile, debased
tragedies, the tragedies of broken souls. But now he says the same of
the sitting-room, and he's gone back to the library."

"Ah!"

"You see, there's so little I can tell you," she went on, with
increasing speed and countless gestures. "I mean it's only very small
things he does and says that are queer. What frightens me is that he
assumes there is some one else in the house all the time--some one I
never see. He does not actually say so, but on the stairs I've seen him
standing aside to let some one pass; I've seen him open a door to let
some one in or out; and often in our bedrooms he puts chairs about as
though for some one else to sit in. Oh--oh yes, and once or twice," she
cried--"once or twice--"

She paused, and looked about her with a startled air.

"Yes?"

"Once or twice," she resumed hurriedly, as though she heard a sound that
alarmed her, "I've heard him running--coming in and out of the rooms
breathless as if something were after him--"

The door opened while she was still speaking, cutting her words off in
the middle, and a man came into the room. He was dark and clean-shaven,
sallow rather, with the eyes of imagination, and dark hair growing
scantily about the temples. He was dressed in a shabby tweed suit, and
wore an untidy flannel collar at the neck. The dominant expression of
his face was startled--hunted; an expression that might any moment leap
into the dreadful stare of terror