overwhelmed her while she was kneeling beside her dead father. Her
hand pressed the stone window-sill in terror of the awful presence.

It is familiar to those few who have knowingly or unwittingly tried to
penetrate the darkness to the light beyond. It has been called the
Guardian, the Dweller on the Threshold, the Wall, the Destroyer, the
Giant Despair. Many have turned back from it as from death itself,
some have gone raving mad in fighting their way through it, some have
actually died in it, of failure of the heart from fright. Some come
upon it unawares in their reasoning, some in the hour of profound
meditation; some know by long experience where it is and keep away
from it; some are able to pass through it with unshaken mind and
unbroken nerves. Scarcely one in a million even guesses that it
exists; of those who do, ninety-nine in a hundred turn from it in
horror; of the remaining score of those who face it in a whole
generation of men, more than half perish in mind or body; the last
ten, perhaps, win through, and these are they that have understood the
writing over the temple door, the great 'Know thyself,' the precept of
the Delphic Oracle and of all mystics before Trophonios and since.

Angela's lips ceased moving, and very soon she was herself again,
quietly sitting there and wondering what had frightened her so badly,
and whether there might not be something wrong with her heart, because
she remembered how it had beat twice quickly in succession and then
had seemed to stand still while she could have counted ten, quite
slowly.

What she called her temptation left her at peace till she knew that
Giovanni's train had started. In imagination she could hear the engine's
whistle, the hissing of the steam from the purge-cocks at starting, the
quickening thunder of the high-pressure exhaust, the clanking noise as
the slowly moving train passed over the old-fashioned turn-tables, and
the long retreating rumble as the express gathered speed and ran out of
sight.

Then it was over, for good and all; Giovanni was gone beyond the
possibility of seeing him again and the strain relaxed. Angela put out
her light, and when she fell asleep a quarter of an hour later, drops
she did not even feel were slowly trickling from her lids to the
pillow; for there are women who do not easily cry when they are awake,
but when they are sleeping their tired eyes shed the pent-up tears and
are refreshed by them.

Angela was not le