I was afraid. I was afraid of the night visitor, but, more than
that, I was afraid of the fear. It had become a real thing by that
time, something that lurked in the lower back hall waiting to catch
me by the throat, to stop my breath, to paralyze me so I could not
escape. I never went beyond that point.

Yet I am not a cowardly woman. I have lived alone too long for
that. I have closed too many houses at night and gone upstairs in
the dark to be afraid of darkness. And even now I can not, looking
back, admit that I was afraid of the darkness there, although I
resorted to the weak expedient of leaving a short length of candle
to burn itself out in the hall when I went up to bed.

I have seen one of Willie's boys waken up at night screaming with a
terror he could not describe. Well, it was much like that with me,
except that I was awake and horribly ashamed of myself.

On the fourth of August I find in my journal the single word "flour."
It recalls both my own cowardice at that time, and an experiment I
made. The telephone had not bothered us for several nights, and I
began to suspect a connection of this sort: when the telephone rang,
there was no night visitor, and vice versa. I was not certain.

Delia was setting bread that night in the kitchen, and Maggie was
reading a ghost story from the evening paper. There was a fine
sifting of flour over the table, and it gave me my idea. When I
went up to bed that night, I left a powdering of flour here and
there on the lower floor, at the door into the library, a patch
by the table, and--going back rather uneasily--one near the
telephone.