Franklyn, in last night’s

dinner talk, had always referred to ‘this house’, but never called it

‘home’; and had emphasised unnecessarily, for a well-bred woman, our

‘great kindness’ in coming down to stay so long with her. Another time,

in answer to my futile compliment about the ‘stately rooms’, she said

quietly, ‘It is an enormous house for so small a party; but I stay

here very little, and only till I get it straight again.’ The three of

us were going up the great staircase to bed as this was said, and, not

knowing quite her meaning, I dropped the subject. It edged delicate

ground, I felt. Frances added no word of her own. It now occurred to

me abruptly that ‘stay’ was the word made use of, when ‘live’ would

have been more natural. How insignificant to recall! Yet why did they

suggest themselves just at this moment?…

And, on going to Frances’s room to make sure she was not nervous or

lonely, I realised abruptly, that Mrs. Franklyn, of course, had talked

with her in a confidential sense that I, as a mere visiting brother,

could not share. Frances had told me nothing. I might easily have

wormed it out of her, had I not felt that for us to discuss further

our hostess and her house merely because we were under the roof

together, was not quite nice or loyal.

‘I’ll call you, Bill, if I’m scared,’ she had laughed as we parted,

my room being just across the big corridor from her own. I had fallen

asleep, thinking what in the world was meant by ‘getting it straight

again’.

And now in my antechamber to the library, on the second morning,

sitting among piles of foolscap and sheets of spotless blotting-paper,

all useless to me, these slight hints came back and helped to frame

the big, vague Shadow I have mentioned. Up to the neck in this Shadow,

almost drowned, yet just treading water, stood the figure of my

hostess in her walking costume. Frances and I seemed swimming to her

aid. The Shadow was large enough to include both house and grounds,

but farther than that I could not see…. Dismissing it, I fell to

reading my purloined book again. Before I turned another page,

however, another startling detail leaped out at me: the figure of Mrs.

Franklyn in the Shadow was not living. It floated helplessly, like a

doll or puppet that has no life in it. It was both pathetic and

dreadful.

Any one who sits in reverie thus, of course, may see similar

ridiculous pictures when the will.no longer guides construction. The

incongruities of dreams are thus explained. I merely record the

picture as it came. That it remained by me for several days, just as

vivid dreams do, is neither here nor there. I did not allow myself to

dwell upon it. The curious thing, perhaps, is that from this moment I

date my inclination, though not yet my desire, to leave. I purposely

say ‘to leave.’

I cannot quite remember when the word changed to that aggressive,

frantic thing which is escape.

V

We were left delightfully to ourselves in this pretentious country

mansion with the soul of a villa. Frances took up her painting again,

and, the weather being propitious, spent hours out of doors, sketching

flowers, trees and nooks of woodland, garden, even the house itself

where bits of it peered suggestively across the orchards. Mrs.