It was, after all, foolish to
risk the sharp evening air, for dusk was falling steadily, and even the
sunshine of the day just fading could not turn autumn into summer. I was
the last to come in. Just as I left the verandah a large black bird
swooped down in front of me past the pillars; it dropped from overhead,
swerved abruptly to one side as it caught sight of me, and flapped
heavily towards the shrubberies on the left of the terraces, where it
disappeared into the gloom. It flew very low, very close. And it
startled me, I think because in some way it seemed like my Shadow
materialized--as though the dark horror that was rising everywhere from
house and garden, then settling back so thickly yet so imperceptibly
upon us all, were incarnated in that whirring creature that passed
between the daylight and the coming night.
I stood a moment, wondering if it would appear again, before I followed
the others indoors, and as I was in the act of closing the windows after
me, I caught a glimpse of a figure on the lawn. It was some distance
away, on the other side of the shrubberies, in fact where the bird had
vanished. But in spite of the twilight that half magnified, half
obscured it, the identity was unmistakable.
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