eyes on me, I, for a reason that I couldn't then have phrased,
achieved an inward resolution--offered a vague pretext
for my lateness and, with the plea of the beauty of the night
and of the heavy dew and wet feet, went as soon as possible
to my room.

Here it was another affair; here, for many days after,
it was a queer affair enough. There were hours, from day
to day--or at least there were moments, snatched even from
clear duties--when I had to shut myself up to think.
It was not so much yet that I was more nervous than I could
bear to be as that I was remarkably afraid of becoming so;
for the truth I had now to turn over was, simply and clearly,
the truth that I could arrive at no account whatever of
the visitor with whom I had been so inexplicably and yet,
as it seemed to me, so intimately concerned. It took little
time to see that I could sound without forms of inquiry
and without exciting remark any domestic complications.
The shock I had suffered must have sharpened all my senses;
I felt sure, at the end of three days and as the result
of mere closer attention, that I had not been practiced
upon by the servants nor made the object of any "game."
Of whatever it was that I knew, nothing was known around me.
There was but one sane inference: someone had taken
a liberty rather gross. That was what, repeatedly, I dipped
into my room and locked the door to say to myself.
We had been, collectively, subject to an intrusion;
some unscrupulous traveler, curious in old houses, had made
his way in unobserved, enjoyed the prospect from the best point
of view, and then stolen out as he came. If he had given me