The door creaked behind her.  A voice said sharply: 

“What are you doing in this house?”

Mr. Stone was standing beside the bust of Socrates.  Bianca went up to him.

“Father!”

Mr. Stone stared.  “It is you!  I thought it was a thief!  Where is Hilary?”

“Gone away.”

“Alone?”

Bianca bowed her head.  “It is very late, Dad,” she whispered.

Mr. Stone’s hand moved as though he would have stroked her.

“The human heart,” he murmured, “is the tomb of many feelings.”

Bianca put her arm round him.

“You must go to bed, Dad,” she said, trying to get him to the door, for in her heart something seemed giving way.

Mr. Stone stumbled; the door swung to; the room was plunged in darkness.  A hand, cold as ice, brushed her cheek.  With all her force she stiffed a scream.

“I am here,” Mr. Stone said.

His hand, wandering downwards, touched her shoulder, and she seized it with her own burning hand.  Thus linked, they groped their way out into the passage towards his room.

“Good-night, dear,” Bianca murmured.

By the light of his now open door Mr. Stone seemed to try and see her face, but she would not show it him.  Closing the door gently, she stole upstairs.

Sitting down in her bedroom by the open window, it seemed to her that the room was full of people—­her nerves were so unstrung.  It was as if walls had not the power this night to exclude human presences.  Moving, or motionless, now distinct, then covered suddenly by the thick veil of some material object, they circled round her quiet figure, lying back in the chair with shut eyes.  These disharmonic shadows flitting in the room made a stir like the rubbing of dry straw or the hum of bees among clover stalks.  When she sat up they vanished, and the sounds became the distant din of homing traffic; but the moment she closed her eyes, her visitors again began to steal round her with that dry, mysterious hum.

She fell asleep presently, and woke with a start.  There, in a glimmer of pale light, stood the little model, as in the fatal picture Bianca had painted of her.  Her face was powder white, with shadows beneath the eyes.  Breath seemed coming through her parted lips, just touched with colour.  In her hat lay the tiny peacock’s feather beside the two purplish-pink roses.  A scent came from her, too—­but faint, as ever was the scent of chicory flower.  How long had she been standing there?  Bianca started to her feet, and as she rose the vision vanished.

She went towards the spot.  There was nothing in that corner but moonlight; the scent she had perceived was merely that of the trees drifting in.

But so vivid had that vision been that she stood at the window, panting for air, passing her hand again and again across her eyes.

Outside, over the dark gardens, the moon hung full and almost golden.  Its honey-pale light filtered down on every little shape of tree, and leaf, and sleeping flower.  That soft, vibrating radiance seemed to have woven all into one mysterious whole, stilling disharmony, so that each little separate shape had no meaning to itself.