The evening closed in. Christa went to bed to finish a yellow-backed
novel. As it was the last she was to read for a long time, she thought
she might as well enjoy it. Ann sat alone in the outer room. The night
was very still. Christa went to sleep, but Ann continued to sit,
stitching at the very plain garb that Christa was to don on the morrow,
not so much because she needed to work as because she felt no need of
sleep. The night being close and warm, her window, a small French
casement, stood open. At a late hour, when passers upon the road were
few, arrested by some sound, she knew not what, she lifted her head and
looked through the open window intently, in the same way as we lift our
eyes and look sometimes just because another, a stranger perhaps, has
riveted his gaze upon us.

A moment more, and Ann saw some one come within the beams of her own
lamp outside of the window; the figure crossed like a dark, silent
shadow, but Ann thought she recognised Toyner. The outline of the
clothes that he had worn when she had seen him last just about this hour
on the previous night was unconsciously impressed upon her mind. A
shudder of fear came over her, and then she was astonished at the fear;
he might easily have done all that she had given him to do and returned
by this time. Yet why did he pass the window in that ghostly fashion and
show no sign of coming to the door? A moment or two that she sat seemed
beaten out into the length and width of minutes by the throbbing of her
nerves, usually so steady. She determined to steel herself against
discomfort. If Toyner had done his work and come home and did not think
it wise to visit her openly, what was there to alarm in that? Yet she
remembered that Toyner had spoken of being away for some indefinite
length of time. She had not understood why last night, and now it seemed
even more hard to understand.