r once already in
Geoffrey's presence, when they met in the kitchen-garden at Windygates,
now passed over her again. Her closed lips dropped apart. Her eyes
slowly dilated--moved, inch by inch from the corner, following something
along the empty wall, in the direction of the bed--stopped at the head
of the bed, exactly above Geoffrey's sleeping face--stared, rigid and
glittering, as if they saw a sight of horror close over it. He sighed
faintly in his sleep. The sound, slight as it was, broke the spell that
held her. She slowly lifted her withered hands, and wrung them above her
head; fled back across the passage; and, rushing into her room, sank on
her knees at the bedside.

Now, in the dead of night, a strange thing happened. Now, in the silence
and the darkness, a hideous secret was revealed.

In the sanctuary of her own room--with all the other inmates of the
house sleeping round her--the dumb woman threw off the mysterious and
terrible disguise under which she deliberately isolated herself among
her fellow-creatures in the hours of the day. Hester Dethridge spoke. In
low, thick, smothered accents--in a wild litany of her own--she prayed.
She called upon the mercy of God for deliverance from herself; for
deliverance from the possession of the Devil; for blindness to fall on
her, for death to strike her, so that she might never see that unnamed
Horror more! Sobs shook the whole frame of the stony woman whom nothing
human moved at other times. Tears poured over those clay-cold cheeks.
One by one, the frantic words of her prayer died away on her lips.
Fierce shuddering fits shook her from head to foot. She started up from
her knees in the darkness. Light! light! light! The unnamed Horror was
behind her in his room. The unnamed Horror was looking at her through
his open door. She found the match-box, and lit the candle on her
table--lit the two other candles set for ornament only on the mantle
piece--and looked all round the brightly lighted little room. "Aha!"
she said to herself, wiping the cold sweat of her agony from her face.
"Candles to other people. God's light to _me._ Nothing to be seen!
nothing to be seen!" Taking one of the candles in her hand, she crossed
the passage, with her head down, turned her back on Geoffrey's open
door, closed it quickly and softly, stretching out her hand behind her,
and retreated again to her own room. She fastened the door, and took
an ink-bottle and a pen from the mantle-piece.