In this attempt, however, he was destined to be frustrated.  For as he determinedly quickened his steps, so did the other, who gained the gate of the garden, unlatched it, turned in, and walked on among the trees going toward the principal door.

A visitor, then!  The man paused by his garden gate, whence he could see his house front, with the light from the window of his own sitting-room streaming over the porch.  The stranger stood before it, made a movement as if searching in his pocket, drew out his hand, lifted it.  The door opened at once.  He disappeared within, and the door closed after him.

He had opened the door with a key.

The man at the gate felt overcome by a sensation almost of horror, which he could not explain to himself.  It was not that he was horrified by the certainly extraordinary fact of some one possessing a key to his house, and using it in this familiar fashion.  It was not even that he was horrified at seeing a man, perhaps a stranger, disappearing thus into his home by night, uninvited, unexpected.  What horrified him was that this particular man, whose footprints he had followed and measured with his foot, whose footfalls he had heard, whose form he had seen outlined against the night, should be within his house, where his wife and his children were, and where his venerable mother was sitting beside the fire.  That this man should be there!  He knew now that from the first moment when he had been aware of his existence he had hated him, that his subconscious mind had hated him.

But who was he?  The natural thing would have been to follow quickly into the house, to see who had entered, to demand an explanation.  But he could not do this.  Why?  He himself did not know why.  But he knew that he dared not do this.  And he waited, expecting he knew not what; a cry, a summons, perhaps, some manifestation that would force him to approach.

None came.  Steadily the lights shone from the house.  There was no sound but the soft fall of a block of snow from an overladen fir branch in the garden.  The man began to marvel.  Who could this be whose familiar entry into his—­his home thus at night caused no disturbance?  There were dogs within:  they had not barked.  There were servants:  apparently they had not stirred.  It was almost as if this stranger’s permanence was accepted by the household.  A long, long time had slipped by.

The man at length, making an almost fierce effort, partly dominated the unreasoning sense of horror which possessed him.  He opened the gate, stepped into the garden, and made his way slowly and softly toward the house door.  But suddenly he stopped.  Through the unshuttered window of his sitting-room, the room in which for years he had spent much of his time, in which he had concocted many schemes to throw dust in the eyes of his neighbors, and even of his own relatives, in which he had learned very perfectly to seem what he was not, and to hide what he really was, he perceived the figure of a man.  It crossed the lighted space slowly, and disappeared with a downward movement.  He knew it was the man he had been following and whom he had seen enter his house.