Aunt Liza must be told.

Through the spectral dawnlight she went down the stairs and took her way
to the kitchen. The door stood half open; she heard the cheery crackling
of the newly lighted fire before she entered. And hearing it, she was
aware of a great coldness that clung like a chain, fettering her every
movement.

Someone moved as she pushed open the door. An enormous shadow leaped
upon the wall like a fantastic monster of the deep. She recoiled for a
second, then, as if drawn against her will, she entered.

By the ruddy glow of the fire she saw a man's broad-chested figure, she
saw the gleam of tawny hair above a thick bull-neck. He was bending
slightly over the fire at her entrance, but, hearing her, he turned. And
in that moment every numbed nerve in Columbine's body was pierced into
quivering life.

She stood as one transfixed, and he stood motionless also in the
flickering light of the flames, gazing at her with eyes of awful blue
that were as burning spirit. But he spoke not a word--not a word. How
could a dead man speak?

And as they stood thus, facing each other, the floor between them began
suddenly to heave, became a mass of seething billows that rocked her,
caught her, engulfed her. She went down into them, and as the tossing
darkness received her, her last thought was that Rufus had come back
indeed--not to say farewell, but to take her with him on the long
voyage from which there is no return....