and something black with a white smudge at the end of it lying stretched out from the head of the stairs.  His body crawled out of bed.  He himself wanted to hide under the clothes, but his body would not let him.  It carried him on against his will.  When he was near enough he saw that the long black thing was a man’s arm and the white smudge a hand, clenched and inert, on the red carpet.  His body tottered out on the landing.  It was his father lying stretched on the stairs, face downwards.

He tried to scream, but his throat and tongue were dry and swollen.  Nor could he touch that still thing, in its passivity more terrible than in its violence.  He was afraid that every moment it would lift its face, and show him some new unthinkable horror.  He skirted it as though it might leap upon him and devour him, and rushed downstairs, faster and faster, with a thousand devils hunting at his heels.

And then he seemed again to be dreaming.  The bailiff ran up from the kitchen in his shirt-sleeves, and he and Edith went up the stairs together, leaving him alone in the library.  The fire had gone out, but he cowered up against the grate, hiding his face in his arms.

They were moving the Dragon.  Bump—­bump—­bump—­bump.  He thought he heard Edith cry out, “Oh, God!” and then silence again.  Presently Edith stood in the doorway, looking at him.  Her eyes were red-rimmed, and yet there was an air of importance, of solemn triumph about her.

“Your father is—­is very ill.  The man downstairs has gone for the doctor, and I am going to ask Christine to come round.  You must be a good boy, Robert.  You must do as I tell you and go to bed.”

So they meant to leave him alone in the house with that dreadful still thing lying somewhere upstairs.  Or perhaps it wasn’t really still.  It might have strange powers now.  You might come upon it anywhere.  You couldn’t be sure.  It might even be in your bed.  He did not want to disobey Edith.  Just then he could have clung to her.  But he could not go up those stairs.  He could not pass those open doors, gaping with unspeakable things.  He felt that if he kept very still, hiding his face, They would not touch him.  There seemed to be a thin—­frightfully thin—­partition between him and the world in which they lived, and that by a sudden movement he might break through.  He had to hold fast to his body.  It was beginning to run away again, to start into long agonized shudderings.

At last a key turned in the latch.  Invisible people went up the stairs in silence.  But he knew that Christine was among them.  He knew because of the sense of sweet security and rest that came over him.  He tumbled on to the hearthrug and fell asleep.

He was cold and stiff when the opening of the library door wakened him.  He did not know who had opened the door.  All he saw was Christine coming down the stairs.  Her face was old and almost silver grey.  She was not crying like Edith, whose sniffs came assertively and at regular intervals from somewhere in the hall.  There was a still, withdrawn look about her, as though she were contemplating something unbreakable that had at last been broken, as though a light had gone out in her for ever.  So that Robert could not run to her as he had meant to do.