The Dark House. I. A. R. Wylie

of importance, of solemn triumph about her.

      "Your father is—is very ill. The man downstairs has gone for the doctor, and I am going to ask Christine to come round. You must be a good boy, Robert. You must do as I tell you and go to bed."

      So they meant to leave him alone in the house with that dreadful still thing lying somewhere upstairs. Or perhaps it wasn't really still. It might have strange powers now. You might come upon it anywhere. You couldn't be sure. It might even be in your bed. He did not want to disobey Edith. Just then he could have clung to her. But he could not go up those stairs. He could not pass those open doors, gaping with unspeakable things. He felt that if he kept very still, hiding his face, They would not touch him. There seemed to be a thin—frightfully thin—partition between him and the world in which they lived, and that by a sudden movement he might break through. He had to hold fast to his body. It was beginning to run away again, to start into long agonized shudderings.

      At last a key turned in the latch. Invisible people went up the stairs in silence. But he knew that Christine was among them. He knew because of the sense of sweet security and rest that came over him. He tumbled on to the hearthrug and fell asleep.

      He was cold and stiff when the opening of the library door wakened him. He did not know who had opened the door. All he saw was Christine coming down the stairs. Her face was old and almost silver grey. She was not crying like Edith, whose sniffs came assertively and at regular intervals from somewhere in the hall. There was a still, withdrawn look about her, as though she were contemplating something unbreakable that had at last been broken, as though a light had gone out in her for ever. So that Robert could not run to her as he had meant to do.

      It was Edith speaking.

      "You won't leave me, will you, Christine? Poor Jim! And then that man—I should die of fright. Besides, it wouldn't be right—not proper—to-morrow one of my sisters——"

      "Very well. I will spend the night here. But Robert must go to my people. They won't mind now. I shall be back in half an hour."

      She helped him into his reefer coat, which she had brought down with her. And still he could not speak to her. She was a long way off from him. As they went into the hall he hid his face against her arm for fear of the things that he might see. But once they were outside, and the good night wind rushed against his face, a great intoxicating joy came over him. He wanted to dance and shout. The Dragon was dead. No one could frighten them again.

      "Aren't we ever coming back, Christine?"

      "No, dear, I don't think so."

      He looked back at the grim, high house. For a moment a sorrow as deep as joy rushed over him. It was as though he knew that something besides the Dragon had died up there in that dimly lit room—as though he were saying good-bye to something he would never find, though he hunted the world over.

      He had been a little boy. He would never be quite a little boy again.

      Or perhaps the Dragon wasn't dead at all—perhaps Dragons never died, but lived on and on, hiding in secret places, waiting to pounce out on you and drag you back.

      He seized Christine's hand.

      "Let's run," he whispered. "Let's run fast."