pearance after she had seen
the train pass. She knew nothing could detain him in the village at
that time of night, and she was sure he would come within that time.
She looked at the dining-room clock and found that she had, if she
allowed that twenty-five minutes, just fifteen minutes to wait. She
sat shrugged up in her little fur-trimmed coat, for the house was
growing very cold, and stared intently at the pale glimmer of the
road. After the twenty-five minutes had passed, she went out in the
dining-room and looked at the clock. The time was more than passed;
there was no doubt. Her father had not come. The panic seized her.

She was now dashed from the heights of hope, and the shock was
double. She realized that her father had not come, would not come
that night; that she would probably have no telegram. She realized
that she was all alone in the house. Now again unreasoning fear as
well as the anxiety for her father seized her. Again the conviction
of the awful population of the empty rooms was upon her. She sat down
again by the window, and she tried to make her reasoning powers
reassert themselves.

"If anything comes this way, I shall see it in time, and I can run
out the back door and across to the neighbors," she told herself. "If
anything comes in the back way, I shall hear and have time to run out
the front door; and I know there is nothing in the house." But she
could not reassure herself, since what terrified her, and even
temporarily unbalanced her, was fear itself.

Fear multiplied, growing upon itself, spreading out new tentacles
with every throb of her imagination, filling the whole house. All her
life she had thought what a frightful thing it would be if ever she
were left alone by herself in a house, all night; and now worse than
that had come to pass, for she was not alone; the house was peopled
by fear and the creatures of fear. She heard noises constantly that
she could not account for, and she also saw things which she could
not account for. Again the small and trivial, acutely stinging horror
of some ordinary object in a new and awful guise possessed her. She
was almost paralyzed at the sudden glimpse of something on the divan
across the room. It was a long time before she could possibly totter
to investigate, and ascertain it was one of her own gloves. But it
did not strike her as at all funny. There was still something
frightful to her about the glove. She went back to the window, and
soon