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some kind of duress. The room also – and horribly – resembled a tomb. Could the Doctor have been one of those visionaries who are given to brooding upon The End, and to decking themselves with the symbols of mortality, like Donne with his shroud? It was difficult to believe inSally emulating her father in this . . . For some time, I think, I fought off the most probable solution, carefully givingweight to every other suggestion which my mind could muster up. In the end I faced the fact that more than an oubliette or a grave, the place resembled a fortress; and the suggestion that there was something in the house against which protection was necessary, was imperative. The locked doors, the scene of ruin on the second floor, Sally’s behaviour. I had known it all the time.
    I turned off the bleak light, hanging by its kinked flex. As I locked the library door, I wondered upon the unknown troubles which might have followed my failure of yesterday to leave the house as I had found it . I walked the few steps down the passage from the library to the sitting-room, at once preoccupied and alert. But, for my peace of mind,neither preoccupied nor alert enough. Because, although only for a moment, a second, a gleam, when in that almost-vanished light I re-entered the sitting-room, I saw him.
    As if, for my benefit, to make the most of the little light, he stood right up in the big bay window. The view he presented to me was what I should call three-quarters back. But I could see a fraction of the outline of his face; entirely white (a thing which has to be seen to be believed) and with the skin drawn tight over the bones as by a tourniquet. There was a suggestion of wispy hair. I think he wore black; a garment, I thought, like a frock-coat. He stood stooped and shadowy, except for the glimpse of white face. Of course I could not see his eyes. Needless to say, he was gone almost as soon as I beheld him; but it would be inexact to say that he went quite immediately. I had a scintilla of timein which to blink. I thought at first that dead or alive, it was Dr Tessler; but immediately afterwards I thought not.
    *
    That evening I tried to take my father into my confidence. I had always considered him the kindest of men, but one from whom I had been carried far out to sea. Now I was interested, as often with people, by the unexpectedness of his response. After I had finished my story (although I did not tell him everything), to which he listened carefully, sometimes putting an intelligent question about a point I had failed to illuminate, he said, ‘If you want myopinion, I’ll give it to you.’
    ‘Please.’
    ‘It’s simple enough. The whole affair is no business of yours.’ He smiled to take the sting out of the words, but underneath he seemed unusually serious.
    ‘I’m fond of Sally. Besides Miss Garvice asked me.’
    ‘Miss Garvice asked you to look in and see if there was any post; not to poke and pry about the house.’
    It was undoubtedly my weak point. But neither was it an altogether strong one for him. ‘Sally wouldn’t let the postman deliver,’ I countered. ‘She was collecting her letters from the post office at the time she was run over. I can’t imagine why.’
    ‘Don’t try,’ said my father.
    ‘But,’ I said, ‘what I saw? Even if I had no right to go all over the house.’
    ‘Mel,’ said my father, ‘you’re supposed to write novels. Haven’t you noticed by this time that everyone’s lives are full of things you can’t understand? The exceptional thing is the thing you can understand. I remember a man I knew when I was first in London . . .’ He broke off. ‘But fortunately we don’t have to understand. And for that reason we’ve no right to scrutinise other people’s lives too closely.’
    Completely baffled, I said nothing.
    My father patted me on the shoulder. ‘You can fancy you see things when the light’s not very good, you know. Particularly an artistic girl like you,