“I was all alone and I’ve been so frightened,” she said with a sob.

He took her hand, which felt dead and cold, and grasped it warmly while he turned to fasten the outer door.

“Why, I thought you were at the theatre,” he responded.  “I’ve been to dine with Kemper, but heaven knows I’d have stayed at home if you’d told me you meant to keep me company.”

A shudder ran through her, and he saw when he turned to look at her, that her face was pinched and blue as if from cold.  In her white gown, under her tangled fair hair, she had a ghastly look like one just awakened from a fearful dream.  But she was very little—­so little in her terror and her blighted prettiness that his heart contracted as it would have done at the sight of a suffering child.

“I say, little girl, what is it all about?” he asked gently, and as she swayed unsteadily, he put his arm around her and drew her against his side.  “Wait a minute while I turn out the light,” he added cheerfully, pressing the electric button with his free hand.  Then holding her closer in a steadying support, they ascended together the darkened staircase.

“I went to the theatre, but I was so ill I couldn’t stay,” she said, and he felt the heavy breaths that laboured through the thin figure within his arm.  “Oh, I am in agony—­in agony and I am so afraid.”

She began crying in loud, uncontrollable sobs as a child cries when it is hurt, protesting that she was afraid—­that she was fearfully afraid.  He felt her terror struggling like a live thing within her—­like an imprisoned animal that could not find an escape into the light.  Her hysteria was almost akin to madness, and the form it took was one of a blind presentiment of evil—­as if she felt always in the air about her the presence of an invisible, unspeakable horror.  Half dragging, half carrying her, he crossed the hall to her room, and laid her upon the bed, which was tumbled as if she had lain tossing wildly there for hours.  Every electric jet was blazing high, and Connie’s evening clothes were lying in a huddled heap upon the floor.  There was a sickening smell of perfume in the room, and he saw that she had broken a bottle of extract and spilled its contents upon the carpet.

“Tell me what it is—­tell me, Connie,” he commanded, rather than pleaded, sitting beside the bed and laying his hand upon her shuddering body.

“It is nothing—­but it is everything,” she gasped, clutching his hand with fingers which were cold and moist.  “I am not in pain—­at least not physically, but I feel—­I believe—­I know that I am going mad.  I see horrible things and I can’t keep them away—­I can’t—­I can’t.  They come in flashes—­in coloured flashes, all red and green, and there is something dreadful about to happen to me.  Oh, don’t let it, don’t let it!”