will of it, lasted while I caught at a dozen possibilities,
none of which made a difference for the better, that I could see,
in there having been in the house--and for how long, above all?--
a person of whom I was in ignorance. It lasted while I
just bridled a little with the sense that my office demanded
that there should be no such ignorance and no such person.
It lasted while this visitant, at all events--and there was a touch
of the strange freedom, as I remember, in the sign of familiarity
of his wearing no hat--seemed to fix me, from his position,
with just the question, just the scrutiny through the fading light,
that his own presence provoked. We were too far apart
to call to each other, but there was a moment at which,
at shorter range, some challenge between us, breaking the hush,
would have been the right result of our straight mutual stare.
He was in one of the angles, the one away from the house,
very erect, as it struck me, and with both hands on the ledge.
So I saw him as I see the letters I form on this page;
then, exactly, after a minute, as if to add to the spectacle,
he slowly changed his place--passed, looking at me hard all
the while, to the opposite corner of the platform. Yes, I had
the sharpest sense that during this transit he never took his
eyes from me, and I can see at this moment the way his hand,
as he went, passed from one of the crenelations to the next.
He stopped at the other corner, but less long, and even
as he turned away still markedly fixed me. He turned away;
that was all I knew.



IV