'
"The dead face of the fog looking in at all three windows
unreasonable increased a sense of riddle, and even terror,
about this tall, narrow house we had entered out of the sky.
I had once more the notion about the gigantic genii--
I fancied that enormous Egyptian faces, of the dead reds
and yellows of Egypt, were staring in at each window of our
little lamp-lit room as at a lighted stage of marionettes.
My companion went on playing with the pistol in front of him,
and talking with the same rather creepy confidentialness.
"`I am always trying to find him--to catch him unawares.
I come in through skylights and trapdoors to find him;
but whenever I find him--he is doing what I am doing.'
"I sprang to my feet with a thrill of fear. `There is some one coming,'
I cried, and my cry had something of a shriek in it. Not from
the stairs below, but along the passage from the inner bedchamber
(which seemed somehow to make it more alarming), footsteps were
coming nearer. I am quite unable to say what mystery, or monster,
or double, I expected to see when the door was pushed open from within.
I am only quite certain that I did not expect to see what I did see.
"Framed in the open doorway stood, with an air of great serenity,
a rather tall young woman, definitely though indefinably artistic--
her dress the colour of spring and her hair of autumn leaves,
with a face which, though still comparatively young,
conveyed experience as well as intelligence.
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