along the wall,
from the corner. Her lips were parted in horror; her eyes, opening wider
and wider, stared rigid and glittering at the empty wall. Step by step
she stole nearer and nearer to Geoffrey, still following some visionary
Thing, which was stealing nearer and nearer, too. He asked himself what
it meant. Was the terror of the deed that he was about to do more than
the woman's brain could bear? Would she burst out screaming, and wake
his wife?

He hurried to the place in the wall--to seize the chance, while the
chance was his.

He steadied his strong hold on the pillow.

He stooped to pass it through the opening.

He poised it over Anne's sleeping face.

At the same moment he felt Hester Dethridge's hand laid on him from
behind. The touch ran through him, from head to foot, like a touch of
ice. He drew back with a start, and faced her. Her eyes were staring
straight over his shoulder at something behind him--looking as they had
looked in the garden at Windygates.

Before he could speak he felt the flash of her eyes in _his_ eyes. For
the third time, she had seen the Apparition behind him. The homicidal
frenzy possessed her. She flew at his throat like a wild beast. The
feeble old woman attacked the athlete!

He dropped the pillow, and lifted his terrible right arm to brush her
from him, as he might have brushed an insect from him.

Even as he raised the arm a frightful distortion seized on his face. As
if with an invisible hand, it dragged down the brow and the eyelid on
the right; it dragged down the mouth on the same side. His arm fell
helpless; his whole body, on the side under the arm, gave way. He
dropped on the floor, like a man shot dead.

Hester Dethridge pounced on his prostrate body--knelt on his broad
breast--and fastened her ten fingers on his throat.

* * * * *

The shock of the fall woke Anne on the instant. She started up--looked
round--and saw a gap in the wall at the head of her bed, and the
candle-light glimmering in the next room. Panic-stricken; doubting,
for the moment, if she were in her right mind, she drew back,
waiting--listening--looking. She saw nothing but the glimmering light
in the room; she heard nothing but a hoarse gasping, as of some person
laboring for breath. The sound ceased. There was an interval of silence.
Then the head of Hester Dethridge rose slowly into sight through the gap
in the wall--rose with the glittering light of madness in the eyes, and
looked at