The table slid into the chairs and the cold beef leered at
the jelly; the pictures jumped and the clock ran in a mad scurry
backwards and forwards.
She dragged her dazed body up through the silent house to her
bedroom, undressed, was instantly in bed and asleep.
She slept without dreams but woke suddenly as though she had been
flung into the midst of one. She sat up in bed, knowing from the
thumping of her heart that she was seized with panic but finding, in
the first flash, no reason for her alarm. The room was pitch black
with shadows of light here and there, but she had with her, in the
confusion of her sleep, uncertainty as to the different parts of the
room. What had awakened her? Of what was she frightened? Then
suddenly, as one slits a black screen with a knife, a thin line of
light cracked the darkness. As though some one had whispered it in
her ear she knew that the door was there and the dark well of
uncertainty into which she had been plunged was suddenly changed
into her own room where she could recognise the window, the chest of
drawers, the looking-glass, the chairs. Some one was opening her
door and her first thought that it was of course her father was
checked instantly by the knowledge, conveyed again as though some
one had whispered to her, that her father was dead.
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