“Well, suppose you gave little doses and kept it up a long time?” She would know. Maybe somebody else would know.

“Suppose you heard about a rich madam who willed everything to a new girl and then died.” Kate knew perfectly well what her first thought would be. What insanity had made her get Ethel floated? Now she couldn’t be found. Ethel should have been paid and tricked into turning over the glass. Where was the glass now? In an envelope—but where? How could Ethel be found?

Ethel would know why and how she had been floated. Ethel wasn’t bright, but she might tell somebody who was bright. That chattering voice might tell the story, how Faye was sick, and what she looked like, and about the will.

Kate was breathing quickly and little prickles of fear were beginning to course over her body. She should go to New York or someplace—not bother to sell the house. She didn’t need the money. She had plenty. Nobody could find her. Yes, but if she ran out and the clever person heard Ethel tell the story, wouldn’t that cinch it?

Kate got up from her bed and took a heavy dose of bromide.

From that time on the crouching fear had always been at her side. She was almost glad when she learned that the pain in her hands was developing arthritis. An evil voice had whispered that it might be a punishment.

She had never gone out in the town very much, but now she developed a reluctance to go out at all. She knew that men stared secretly after her, knowing who she was. Suppose one of those men should have Charles’ face or Samuel’s eyes. She had to drive herself to go out once a week.

Then she built the lean-to and had it painted gray. She said it was because the light troubled her eyes, and gradually she began to believe the light did trouble her eyes. Her eyes burned after a trip to the town. She spent more and more time in her little room.

It is possible to some people, and it was possible for Kate, to hold two opposing thoughts at the same time. She believed that the light pained her eyes, and also that the gray room was a cave to hide in, a dark burrow in the earth, a place where no eyes could stare at her. Once, sitting in her pillowed chair, she considered having a secret door built so that she would have an avenue of escape. And then a feeling rather than a thought threw out the plan. She would not be protected then. If she could get out, something could get in—that something which had begun to crouch outside the house, to crawl close to the walls at night, and to rise silently, trying to look through the windows. It required more and more will power for Kate to leave the house on Monday afternoons.

When Cal began to follow her she had a terrible leap of fear. And when she waited for him behind the privet she was very near to panic.