“Do you hear any sound?”

“No.”

“Was that a hand which touched me?”

“No.”

“We must wait.”

And so silence came again, and suddenly there was quite a rush of light into the recess.  Celia was startled.  She turned her head back again towards the window.  The wooden door had swung a little more open.  There was a wider chink to let the twilight of that starlit darkness through.  And as she looked, the chink slowly broadened and broadened, the door swung slowly back on hinges which were strangely silent.  Celia stared at the widening panel of grey light with a vague terror.  It was strange that she could hear no whisper of wind in the garden.  Why, oh, why was that latticed door opening so noiselessly?  Almost she believed that the spirits after all...  And suddenly the recess darkened again, and Celia sat with her heart leaping and shivering in her breast.  There was something black against the glass doors—­a man.  He had appeared as silently, as suddenly, as any apparition.  He stood blocking out the light, pressing his face against the glass, peering into the room.  For a moment the shock of horror stunned her.  Then she tore frantically at the cords.  All thought of failure, of exposure, of dismissal had fled from her.  The three poor women—­that was her thought—­were sitting unwarned, unsuspecting, defenceless in the pitch-blackness of the salon.  A few feet away a man, a thief, was peering in.  They were waiting for strange things to happen in the darkness.  Strange and terrible things would happen unless she could free herself, unless she could warn them.  And she could not.  Her struggles were mere efforts to struggle, futile, a shiver from head to foot, and noiseless as a shiver.  Adele Rossignol had done her work well and thoroughly.  Celia’s arms, her waist, her ankles were pinioned; only the bandage over her mouth seemed to be loosening.  Then upon horror, horror was added.  The man touched the glass doors, and they swung silently inwards.  They, too, had been carelessly left unbolted.  The man stepped without a sound over the sill into the room.  And, as he stepped, fear for herself drove out for the moment from Celia’s thoughts fear for the three women in the black room.  If only he did not see her!  She pressed herself against the pillar.  He might overlook her, perhaps!  His eyes would not be so accustomed to the darkness of the recess as hers.  He might pass her unnoticed—­if only he did not touch some fold of her dress.

And then, in the midst of her terror, she experienced so great a revulsion from despair to joy that a faintness came upon her, and she almost swooned.  She saw who the intruder was.  For when he stepped into the recess he turned towards her, and the dim light struck upon him and showed her the contour of his face.  It was her lover, Harry Wethermill.  Why he had come at this hour, and in this strange way, she did not consider.  Now she must attract his eyes, now her fear was lest he should not see her.