Wogan had walked perhaps halfway from the corner to his door before he
stopped. He stopped suddenly and held his breath. Then he shaded his
candle with the palm of his hand and looked forward. Immediately he
turned, and walking on tiptoe came silently back into the big passage.
Even this was not well lighted; it stretched away upon his right and
left, full of shadows. But it was silent. The only sounds which reached
Wogan as he stood there and listened were the sounds of people moving
and speaking at a great distance. He blew out his candle, cautiously
replaced it on the table, and crept down again towards his room. There
was no window in this small passage, there was no light there at all
except a gleam of silver in front of him and close to the ground. That
gleam of silver was the moonlight shining between the bottom of one of
the doors and the boards of the passage. And that door was not the door
of Wogan's room, but the room beside it. Where his door stood, there
might have been no door at all.

Yet the moon which shone through the windows of one room must needs also
shine into the other, unless, indeed, the curtains were drawn. But
earlier in the evening Wogan had read a letter by the moonlight at his
window; the curtains were not drawn. There was, therefore, a rug, an
obstruction of some sort against the bottom of the door. But earlier in
the evening Wogan's foot had slipped upon the polished boards; there had
been no mat or skin at all. It had been pushed there since. Wogan could
not doubt for what reason. It was to conceal the light of a lamp or
candle within the room. Someone, in a word, was prying in Wogan's room,
and Wogan began to consider who. It was not the Countess, who was
engaged upon her harp, but the Countess had tried to detain him. Wogan
was startled as he understood the reason of her harp becoming so
suddenly untuned. She had spoken to him with so natural a spontaneity,
she had accepted the Prince's aid with so complete an absence of