"In fact," with a whimsical smile, "a sort of endlessly eternal rest
ought to cure anybody. Don't you think so?"

She stared at him.

"Do you happen to remember that my father, needing a good long rest,
took a sudden vacation to enjoy it?"

"I--I--don't know what you mean!"--tremulously.

"You remember how he started on that restful vacation which he is still
enjoying?"

A shudder ran over her. She strove to speak, but her voice died in her
throat.

"My father," he said dreamily, "seems to want me to join him during his
vacation--"

"Louis!"

"What are you frightened about? It's as good a vacation as any
other--only one takes no luggage and pays no hotel bills.... Haven't you
any sense of humour left in you, Shiela? I'm not serious."

She said, trembling, and very white: "I thought you meant it." Then she
rose with a shiver, turned, and mounted the stairs to her room again.
But in the stillness of the place something was already at work on
her--fear--a slow dawning alarm at the silence, the loneliness, the
forests, the rain--a growing horror of the place, of the people in it,
of this man the world called her husband, of his listening silences, his
solitary laughter, his words spoken to something unseen in empty rooms,
his awful humour.

Her very knees were shaking under her now; she stared around her like a
trapped thing, desperate, feeling that self-control was going in sudden,
ungovernable panic.

Scarcely knowing what she was about she crept to the telephone and,
leaning heavily against the wall, placed the receiver to her ear.

For a long while she waited, dreading lest the operator had gone. Then a
far voice hailed her; she gave the name; waited interminable minutes
until a servant's sleepy voice requested her to hold the wire. And, at
last:

"Is it you?"

* * * * *

"Garry, could you come here to-night?"

* * * * *

"Danger? No, I am in no danger; I am just frightened."

* * * * *

"I don't know what is frightening me."

* * * * *

"No, not ill. It's only that I am so horribly alone here in the rain.
I--I cannot seem to endure it." She was speaking almost incoherently,
now, scarcely conscious of what she was saying. "There's a man
downstairs who talks in empty rooms and listens to things I cannot
hear--listens every day, I tell you; I've seen him often, often--I m