‘Precisely.’

’It was not precisely,—­or, at least, it was not precisely in the sense you mean.  You may laugh at me, Sydney, but I had an altogether indescribable feeling, a feeling which amounted to knowledge, that I was in the presence of the supernatural.’

‘Nonsense!’

’It was not nonsense,—­I wish it had been nonsense.  As I have said, I was conscious, completely conscious, that some frightful peril was assailing Paul.  I did not know what it was, but I did know that it was something altogether awful, of which merely to think was to shudder.  I wanted to go to his assistance, I tried to, more than once; but I couldn’t, and I knew that I couldn’t,—­I knew that I couldn’t move as much as a finger to help him.—­Stop, —­let me finish!—­I told myself that it was absurd, but it wouldn’t do; absurd or not, there was the terror with me in the room.  I knelt down, and I prayed, but the words wouldn’t come.  I tried to ask God to remove this burden from my brain, but my longings wouldn’t shape themselves into words, and my tongue was palsied.  I don’t know how long I struggled, but, at last, I came to understand that, for some cause, God had chosen to leave me to fight the fight alone.  So I got up, and undressed, and went to bed,—­and that was the worst of all.  I had sent my maid away in the first rush of my terror, afraid, and, I think, ashamed, to let her see my fear.  Now I would have given anything to summon her back again, but I couldn’t do it, I couldn’t even ring the bell.  So, as I say, I got into bed.’

She paused, as if to collect her thoughts.  To listen to her words, and to think of the suffering which they meant to her, was almost more than I could endure.  I would have thrown away the world to have been able to take her in my arms, and soothe her fears.  I knew her to be, in general, the least hysterical of young women; little wont to become the prey of mere delusions; and, incredible though it sounded, I had an innate conviction that, even in its wildest periods, her story had some sort of basis in solid fact.  What that basis amounted to, it would be my business, at any and every cost, quickly to determine.

’You know how you have always laughed at me because of my objection to—­cockroaches, and how, in spring, the neighbourhood of May-bugs has always made me uneasy.  As soon as I got into bed I felt that something of the kind was in the room.’

‘Something of what kind?’

’Some kind of—­beetle.  I could hear the whirring of its wings; I could hear its droning in the air; I knew that it was hovering above my head; that it was coming lower and lower, nearer and nearer.  I hid myself; I covered myself all over with the clothes, —­then I felt it bumping against the coverlet.  And, Sydney!’ She drew closer.  Her blanched cheeks and frightened eyes made my heart bleed.  Her voice became but an echo of itself.  ‘It followed me.’

‘Marjorie!’