Yet I may honestly avow that it was not ordinary
personal fear I felt, nor any common dread of physical injury. It was,
rather, a vast, impersonal shrinking--a sympathetic shrinking--from the
agony and terror that countless others, somewhere, somehow, felt for
themselves. The first sensation of a prison overwhelmed me in that
instant, of bitter strife and frenzied suffering, and the fiery torture
of the yearning to escape that was yet hopelessly uttered.... It was of
incredible power. It was real. The vain, intolerable hope swept over me.
I mastered myself, though hardly knowing how, and took my sister's hand.
It was as cold as ice, as I led her firmly to the door and out into the
passage. Apparently she noticed nothing of my so near collapse, for I
caught her whisper as we went. "You are brave, Bill; splendidly brave."
The upper corridors of the great sleeping house were brightly lit; on
her way to me she had turned on every electric switch her hand could
reach; and as we passed the final flight of stairs to the floor below, I
heard a door shut softly and knew that Mabel had been listening--waiting
for us. I led my sister up to it. She knocked, and the door was opened
cautiously an inch or so.
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