in the inky dark."

To this there came no reply.

"I suppose you, like me," he continued courteously, "are an unlucky
wayfarer who had to choose hastily between trespassing and being
drowned."

"Yes."

Inevitably he found himself wondering what this lady who shared his
stolen refuge could be like. That she was a lady her voice left no
doubt. His eye strained off into the Ethiopian blackness, but could make
neither heads nor tails of it.

"Voices always go by contraries," he thought. "She's fifty-two and wears
glasses."

Aloud he said: "But please tell me quite frankly--am I intruding?"

"Not at all," said the lady, only that and nothing more.

"Perhaps then you won't object if I find a seat? Leaning against a door
is so dull, don't you think?"

He groped forward, hands outstretched before him, stumbled against the
stairway which he sought, and sat down uncomfortably on the
next-to-the-bottom step. Then suddenly the oddness of his situation
rushed over him, and, vexed though he was with the chain of needless
circumstances which had brought him into it, he with difficulty