ed against him. With not the faintest
thought of resentment or surprise, he turned back, stooped over the
balustrade and looked down into the kitchen. Nothing there was visible
but a narrow strip of the white table, on which lay a black cotton
glove, and beyond, the glint of a copper pan. What made all these mute
and inanimate things so coldly hostile?

An extreme, almost nauseous distaste filled him at the thought of
knocking for admission, of confronting Ada, possibly even Sheila, in the
cold echoing gloom of the detestable porch; of meeting the first wild,
almost metallic, flash of recognition. He swept softly down again, and
paused at the open gate. Once before the voices of the night had called
him: they would not summon him forever in vain. He raised his eyes again
towards the window. Who were these visitors met together to drum the
alien out? He narrowed his lids and smiled up at the vacuous unfriendly
house. Then wheeling, on a sudden impulse he groped his way down the
gravel path that led into the garden. As he had left it, the long white
window was ajar.

With extreme caution he pushed it noiselessly up, and climbed in, and
stood listening again in the black passage on the other side. When
he had fully recovered his breath, and the knocking of his heart was
stilled, he trod on softly, till turning the corner he came in sight
of the kitchen door. It was now narrowly open, just enough, perhaps, to
admit a cat; and as he softly approached, looking steadily in, he
could see Ada sitting at the empty table, beneath the single whistling
chandelier, in her black dress and black straw hat. She was reading
apparently; but her back was turned to him and he could not distinguish
her arm beyond the elbow. Then almost in an instant he discovered, as,
drawn up and unstirring he gazed on, that she was not reading, but had
covertly and instantaneously raised her eyes from the print on the table
beneath, and was transfixedly listening too. He turned his eyes away and
waited. When again he peered in she had apparently bent once more over
her magazine, and he stole on.

One by one, with a thin remote exultation in his progress, he mounted
the kitchen stairs, and with each deliberate and groping step the voices
above him became more clearly audible. At last, in the darkness of the
hall, but faintly stirred by the gleam of lamplight from the chink of
the dining-room door, he stood on the threshold of the drawing-room door
and co