Lloyd put away the hypodermic syringe and the minim-glass in their places in the bag, added a little ice-pick to its contents, and shut the bag with a snap.

“Now,” she announced, “I’m ready.”

When Miss Douglass had taken herself away Lloyd settled herself in the place she had vacated, and, stripping the wrappings from the books and magazines she had bought, began to turn the pages, looking at the pictures.  But her interest flagged.  She tried to read, but soon cast the book from her and leaned back upon the great couch, her hands clasped behind the great bronze-red coils at the back of her head, her dull-blue eyes fixed and vacant.

For hours the preceding night she had lain broad awake in her bed, staring at the shifting shadow pictures that the electric lights, shining through the trees down in the square, threw upon the walls and ceiling of her room.  She had eaten but little since morning; a growing spirit of unrest had possessed her for the last two days.  Now it had reached a head.  She could no longer put her thoughts from her.

It had all come back again for the fiftieth time, for the hundredth time, the old, intolerable burden of anxiety growing heavier month by month, year by year.  It seemed to her that a shape of terror, formless, intangible, and invisible, was always by her, now withdrawing, now advancing, but always there; there close at hand in some dark corner where she could not see, ready at every instant to assume a terrible and all too well-known form, and to jump at her from behind, from out the dark, and to clutch her throat with cold fingers.  The thing played with her, tormented her; at times it all but disappeared; at times she believed she had fought it from her for good, and then she would wake of a night, in the stillness and in the dark, and know it to be there once more—­at her bedside—­at her back—­at her throat—­till her heart went wild with fear, and the suspense of waiting for an Enemy that would not strike, but that lurked and leered in dark corners, wrung from her a suppressed cry of anguish and exasperation, and drove her from her sleep with streaming eyes and tight-shut hands and wordless prayers.

For a few moments Lloyd lay back upon the couch, then regained her feet with a brusque, harassed movement of head and shoulders.

“Ah, no,” she exclaimed under her breath, “it is too dreadful.”

She tried to find diversion in her room, rearranging the few ornaments, winding the clock that struck ships’ bells instead of hours, and turning the wicks of the old empire lamps that hung in brass brackets on either side the fireplace.  Lloyd, after building the agency, had felt no scruple in choosing the best room in the house and furnishing it according to her taste.  Her room was beautiful, but very simple in its appointments.  There were great flat wall-space unspoiled by bric-a-brac, the floor marquetry, with but few rugs.  The fireplace and its appurtenances were of brass.  Her writing-desk, a huge affair, of ancient and almost black San Domingo mahogany.