alteration in her manner; that was all. She seemed a little restless.
Her vivacity flagged now and then. She was more willing to be alone than
she had been. But we were old married folk now, and could not be always
in each other's sight. I had a great many people connected with the
estate to see, and had to gather up the tangled threads of many affairs.

The honeymoon was over. Of course we could not always be together.

Still, I should have wished Margot to desire it, and I could not hide
from myself that now and then she scarcely concealed a slight impatience
to be left in solitude. This troubled me, but only a little, for she was
generally as fond as ever. That evening, however, an incident occurred
which rendered me decidedly uneasy, and made me wonder if my wife were
not inclined to that curse of highly-strung women--hysteria!

I had been riding over the moors to visit a tenant-farmer who lived at
some distance, and did not return until twilight. Dismounting, I let
myself into the house, traversed the hall, and ascended the stairs. As I
wore spurs, and the steps were of polished oak and uncarpeted, I walked
noisily enough to warn anyone of my approach. I was passing the door
of the room that had been my grandmother's sitting-room, when I noticed
that it stood open. The house was rather dark, and the interior was dim
enough, but I could see a figure in a white dress moving about inside.
I recognised Margot, and wondered what she was doing, but her movements
were so singular that, instead of speaking to her, I stood in the
doorway and watched her.

She was walking, with a very peculiar, stealthy step, around the room,
not as if she were looking for anything, but merely as if she were
restless or ill at ease. But what struck me forcibly was this, that
there was something curiously animal in her movements, seen thus in a
dim half-light that only partially revealed her to me. I had never
seen a woman walk in that strangely wild yet soft way before. There was
something uncanny about it, that rendered me extremely discomforted; yet
I was quite fascinated, and rooted to the ground.

I cannot tell how long I stood there. I was so completely absorbed in
the passion of the gazer that the passage of time did not concern me
in the least. I was as one assisting at a strange spectacle. This white
thing moving in the dark did not suggest my wife to me, although it
was she. I might have been watching an animal, vague, yet purpos