I can never forget the vivid, disagreeable effect it
produced upon me. What was she doing there at half-past eleven at night,
all alone in the darkness? She was sitting upright, stiff, in a big
chair below the clock. It gave me a turn. It was so incongruous and odd.
She rose quietly as I turned the corner of the stairs, and asked me
respectfully, her eyes cast down as usual, whether I had finished with
the library, so that she might lock up. There was no more to it than
that; but the picture stayed with me--unpleasantly.
These various impressions came to me at odd moments, of course, and not
in a single sequence as I now relate them. I was hard at work before
three days were past, not writing, as explained, but reading, making
notes, and gathering material from the library for future use. It was in
chance moments that these curious flashes came, catching me unawares
with a touch of surprise that sometimes made me start. For they proved
that my under-mind was still conscious of the Shadow, and that far away
out of sight lay the cause of it that left me with a vague unrest,
unsettled, seeking to "nest" in a place that did not want me. Only when
this deeper part knows harmony, perhaps, can good brainwork result, and
my inability to write was thus explained.
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