"Are you sure it really rings?" he asked.

And so bad was my nervous condition by that time, so undermined was
my self-confidence, that I was not certain! And this in face of
the fact that it invariably roused Maggie as well as myself.

On the eleventh of August Miss Emily came to tea. The date does
not matter, but by following the chronology of my journal I find I
can keep my narrative in proper sequence.

I had felt better that day. So far as I could determine, I had not
walked in my sleep again, and there was about Maggie an air of
cheerfulness and relief which showed that my condition was more
nearly normal than it had been for some time. The fear of the
telephone and of the back hall was leaving me, too. Perhaps Martin
Sprague's matter-of-fact explanation had helped me. But my own
theory had always been the one I recorded at the beginning of this
narrative--that I caught and--well, registered is a good word--
that I registered an overwhelming fear from some unknown source.

I spied Miss Emily as she got out of the hack that day, a cool
little figure clad in a thin black silk dress, with the sheerest
possible white collars and cuffs. Her small bonnet with its crepe
veil was faced with white, and her carefully crimped gray hair
showed a wavy border beneath it. Mr. Staley, the station hackman,
helped her out of the surrey, and handed her the knitting-bag
without which she was seldom seen. It was two weeks since she had
been there, and she came slowly up the walk, looking from side to
side at the perennial borders, then in full August bloom.