She saw for
example little scenes in which Maggie and Charlotte and medicine
bottles and Chinese faces and printed pages of a book all moved
together in a sort of convincing incoherence; and she was just
beginning to lose herself in the depths of sleep, and to forget her
firm resolution of reading another page or so of the book by her side,
when a little sound came, and she opened, as she thought, her eyes.
Her reading lamp cast a funnel of light across her bed, and the rest
of the room was lit only by the fire dancing in the chimney. Yet this
was bright enough, she thought at the time, to show her perfectly
distinctly, though with shadows fleeting across it, her son's face
peering in at the door. She thought she said something; but she was
not sure afterwards. At any rate, the face did not move; and it seemed
to her that it bore an expression of such extraordinary malignity that
she would hardly have known it for her son's. In a sudden panic she
raised herself in bed, staring; and as the shadows came and went, as
she stared, the face was gone again. Mrs. Baxter drew a quick breath
or two as she looked; but there was nothing. Yet again she could have
sworn that she heard the faint jar of the closing door.
Pages:
301
302
303
304
305
306
307
308
309
310
311
312
313
314
315
316
317
318
319
320
321
322
323
324
325