But it was unthinkable. He would maintain his will. He turned past the door of the parental bedroom like a shadow, and was climbing the second flight of stairs. They creaked under his weight—it was exasperating. Ah what disaster, if the mother’s door opened just beneath him, and she saw him! It would have to be, if it were so. He held the control still.

He was not quite up these stairs when he heard a quick running of feet below, the outer door was closed and locked, he heard Ursula’s voice, then the father’s sleepy exclamation. He pressed on swiftly to the upper landing.

Again a door was ajar, a room was empty. Feeling his way forward, with the tips of his fingers, travelling rapidly, like a blind man, anxious lest Ursula should come upstairs, he found another door. There, with his preternaturally fine sense alert, he listened. He heard someone moving in bed. This would be she.

Softly now, like one who has only one sense, the tactile sense, he turned the latch. It clicked. He held still. The bed–clothes rustled. His heart did not beat. Then again he drew the latch back, and very gently pushed the door. It made a sticking noise as it gave.

‘Ursula?’ said Gudrun’s voice, frightened. He quickly opened the door and pushed it behind him.

‘Is it you, Ursula?’ came Gudrun’s frightened voice. He heard her sitting up in bed. In another moment she would scream.

‘No, it’s me,’ he said, feeling his way towards her. ‘It is I, Gerald.’

She sat motionless in her bed in sheer astonishment. She was too astonished, too much taken by surprise, even to be afraid.

‘Gerald!’ she echoed, in blank amazement. He had found his way to the bed, and his outstretched hand touched her warm breast blindly. She shrank away.

‘Let me make a light,’ she said, springing out.

He stood perfectly motionless. He heard her touch the match–box, he heard her fingers in their movement. Then he saw her in the light of a match, which she held to the candle. The light rose in the room, then sank to a small dimness, as the flame sank down on the candle, before it mounted again.

She looked at him, as he stood near the other side of the bed. His cap was pulled low over his brow, his black overcoat was buttoned close up to his chin. His face was strange and luminous. He was inevitable as a supernatural being. When she had seen him, she knew. She knew there was something fatal in the situation, and she must accept it. Yet she must challenge him.

‘How did you come up?’ she asked.

‘I walked up the stairs—the door was open.’

She looked at him.

‘I haven’t closed this door, either,’ he said. She walked swiftly across the room, and closed her door, softly, and locked it. Then she came back.

She was wonderful, with startled eyes and flushed cheeks, and her plait of hair rather short and thick down her back, and her long, fine white night–dress falling to her feet.