That space stands for the interval of silence that fell after
Christopher had told me the story. I thought he had quite finished. He
sat motionless, his shoulders fallen forward, his eyes fixed in the
heart of the incandescent globe over the dressing-table, his long
fingers wrapped around the neck of the 'cello.

"And so she got me through those years," he said. "Those nip-and-tuck
years that followed. By her lie.

"Insanity is a queer thing," he went on, still brooding into the light.
"There's more of it about than we're apt to think. It works in so many
ways. In hobbies, arts, philosophies. Music is a kind of insanity. I
know. I've got mine penned up in the music now, and I think I can keep
it there now, and save my soul."

"Yours?"

"Yes, mine. I know now--now that it's safe for me to know. I was down
at that village by the beach a year or so ago. I'm a Kain, of course,
one of the crazy Kains, after all. John Sanderson was born in the
village and lived there till his death. Only once that folks could
remember had he been away, and that was when he took some papers to the
city for Mrs. Kain to sign. He was caretaker at the old 'Kain place' the
last ten years of his life, and deaf, they said, since his tenth
year--'deaf as a post.' And they told me something else. They said there
was a story that before my father, Daniel, married her, my mother had
been an actress. An actress! You'll understand that I needed no one to
tell me _that_!