ch protruded, bare and yellow and weazened,
an arm. She caught her breath and fought down the sudden rising of her
heart. It was nothing--only lying there so detached in the moonlight,
thrust up out of the shadow out of nowhere, it did look gruesome, like
something dead, something completely and irrevocably dead. It lay
without a sign of movement, with the fingers slightly curled up under
the palm and clutching at the coverlet. Gradually, her calm returning,
she listened with her head thrust around the corner of the door, and
directly she caught the very faint sound of breathing, a far-away,
fine-drawn, eerie whisper. Slowly she backed away and closed the
door.

She groped over to a chair in the sitting room and sat down. Through
the squares of the window panes she could see the milky white patches
of moonlight flooding the world outside, and the silence came creeping
up all around until it seemed to squeeze the very walls inward.

"I wonder what's going on?" she thought. Because of its very
soundlessness, the universe about her seemed to be teeming with vague
suggestions. That distant clamour, the hurry of footsteps, and then
Joe, slipping away from her into the shadow. And now the deathlike
stillness.

She began to rock slowly to and fro. With an effort of the will she
forced herself to think of cheerful things, housework and cooking, and
sunlight and people. Suddenly she realized that there was no reason
for her sitting up. She might just as well go to bed. She started to
her feet, but something held her, something forced her back into her
chair. There had been footsteps fading off into the darkness. She must
wait until they came back again--out of the darkness. Something in the
idea strangely excited her, left her tense. In all this silence she
knew she could not sleep; she would be lying there waiting, waiting
for something, she knew not what. So she settled back and rocked and
waited, staring with wide-open eyes at the steel-blue patch that was
the door. And the night settled down and drew close to her with its
uncertainties.

Time passed.

Suddenly she was aware of sound. So gradually it had come that she
realized she had been hearing it for some time. It was coming back.
She riveted her gaze upon the door, watched it unblinking, waiting for
it to open upon her with its secret any moment.

Slowly she rocked to and fro. Gradually nearer and nearer came the
sound. Rolling upward, gathering round and round i