further through the
morning, or again a few minutes would lead from broad daylight to the
depths of the night. One evening when the room appeared very dim, either
because it was evening or because the blinds were drawn, Helen said to
her, "Some one is going to sit here to-night. You won't mind?"

Opening her eyes, Rachel saw not only Helen but a nurse in spectacles,
whose face vaguely recalled something that she had once seen. She had
seen her in the chapel. "Nurse McInnis," said Helen, and the nurse
smiled steadily as they all did, and said that she did not find many
people who were frightened of her. After waiting for a moment they both
disappeared, and having turned on her pillow Rachel woke to find herself
in the midst of one of those interminable nights which do not end at
twelve, but go on into the double figures--thirteen, fourteen, and so
on until they reach the twenties, and then the thirties, and then the
forties. She realised that there is nothing to prevent nights from doing
this if they choose. At a great distance an elderly woman sat with her
head bent down; Rachel raised herself slightly and saw with dismay that
she was playing cards by the light of a candle which stood in the hollow
of a newspaper. The sight had something inexplicably sinister about it,
and she was terrified and cried out, upon which the woman laid down
her cards and came across the room, shading the candle with her hands.
Coming nearer and nearer across the great space of the room, she stood
at last above Rachel's head and said, "Not asleep? Let me make you
comfortable."

She put down the candle and began to arrange the bedclothes. It struck
Rachel that a woman who sat playing cards in a cavern all night long
would have very cold hands, and she shrunk from the touch of them.

"Why, there's a toe all the way down there!" the woman said, proceeding
to tuck in the bedclothes. Rachel did not realise that the toe was hers.

"You must try and lie still," she proceeded, "because if you lie still
you will be less hot, and if you toss about you will make yourself more
hot, and we don't want you to be any hotter than you are." She stood
looking down upon Rachel for an enormous length of time.

"And the quieter you lie the sooner you will be well," she repeated.

Rachel kept her eyes fixed upon the peaked shadow on the ceiling, and
all her energy was concentrated upon the desire that this shadow should
move. But the shadow and the woman seem