"Yes, but they were rather afraid of you."

"Afraid of _me_?"

"Yes, so one of them told me afterwards."

I was fairly jiggered. If my personality can inspire fear or
respect the world must be a simpler place than I had thought it.
Afraid of a shadow, a poor make-believe like me? Are children
more absurdly terrified by a candle in a hollow turnip? Was
Bedlam at full moon ever scared by anything half so silly?




_Terror_


A pause suddenly fell on our conversation--one of those
uncomfortable lapses when we sit with fixed smiles, searching
our minds for some remark with which to fill up the unseasonable
silence. It was only a moment--"But suppose," I said to myself
with horrible curiosity, "suppose none of us had found a word to
say, and we had gone on sitting in silence?"

It is the dread of Something happening, Something unknown and
awful, that makes us do anything to keep the flicker of talk
from dying out. So travellers at night in an unknown forest keep
their fires ablaze, in fear of Wild Beasts lurking ready in the
darkness to leap upon them.