A novelist might mold the queer material into coherent sequence
that would be interesting but could not be true.
It remains, therefore, not a story but a history. Nothing happened.
Perhaps my intense dislike of the fall of darkness was due wholly to my
stirred imagination, and perhaps my anger when I learned that Frances
now occupied a bed in our hostess's room was unreasonable. Nerves were
unquestionably on edge. I was forever on the lookout for some event that
should make escape imperative, but yet that never presented itself. I
slept lightly, left my door ajar to catch the slightest sound, even made
stealthy tours of the house below-stairs while everybody dreamed in
their beds. But I discovered nothing; the doors were always locked; I
neither saw the housekeeper again in unreasonable times and places, nor
heard a footstep in the passages and halls. The Noise was never once
repeated. That horrible, ultimate thunder, my intensest dread of all,
lay withdrawn into the abyss whence it had twice arisen. And though in
my thoughts it was sternly denied existence, the great black reason for
the fact afflicted me unbelievably. Since Mabel's fruitless effort to
escape, the Doors kept closed remorselessly.
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