God! what was I to do now!  How meet those cold, indifferent eyes filled only with thoughts of his own safety and see them flare again with murderous impulse and that impulse directed towards myself!  I couldn’t meet them; I couldn’t stay; but how fly when not a muscle responded.  I had to stay—­hanging from the sill and praying—­praying—­till my senses blurred and I knew nothing till on a sudden they cleared again, and I woke to the blessed realisation that the door had been pushed against my slender figure, hiding it completely from his sight, and that this door was now closed again and this time tightly, and I was safe—­safe!

The relief sent the perspiration in a reek from every pore; but the icy revulsion came quickly.  As I drew up my knees to get a better purchase on the sill, heaven’s torch was suddenly lit up, the closet became a pit of dazzling whiteness amid which I saw the blot of that dead body, with head propped against the wall and eyes—­

Remember, I was but fifteen.  The legs were hunched up and almost touched mine.  I could feel them—­though there was no contact—­ pushing me—­forcing me from my frail support.  Would it lighten again?  Would I have to see—­No! any risk first.  The window—­I no longer thought of it.  It was too remote, too difficult.  The door—­ the door—­there was my way—­the only way which would rid me instantly of any proximity to this hideous object.  I flung myself at it—­found the knob—­turned it and yelled aloud—­My foot had brushed against him.  I knew the difference and it sent me palpitating over the threshold; but no further.  Love of life had returned with my escape from that awful prison-house, and I halted in the semidarkness into which I had plunged, thanking Heaven for the thunder peal which had drowned my loud cry.

For I was not yet safe.  He was still there.  He had turned out all lights but one, but this was sufficient to show me his tall figure straining up to put out this last jet.

Another instant and darkness enveloped the whole place.  He had not seen me and was going.  I could hear the sound of his feet as he went stumbling in his zigzag course towards the door.  Then every sound both on his part and on mine was lost in a swoop of down-falling rain and I remember nothing more till out of the blankness before me, he started again into view, within the open doorway where in the glare of what he called heaven’s candles he stood, poising himself to meet the gale which seemed ready to catch him up and whirl him with other inconsequent things into the void of nothingness.  Then darkness settled again and I was left alone with Murder;—­all the innocence of my youth gone, and my soul a very charnel house.

I had to re-enter that closet; I had to take the only means of escape proffered.  But I went through it as we go through the horrors of nightmare.  My muscles obeyed my volition, but my sensibilities were no longer active.  How I managed to draw myself up to that slippery sill all reeking now with rain, or save myself from falling to my death in the whirling blast that carried everything about me into the ravine below, I do not know.