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Nancy . . .
where shall I wipe it off? But you mustn’t stir. It will hear. You forget:
WE ARE NOT ALONE.”
     
At this moment the sofa creaked, a cushion slid off and fell to the
floor.
     
Noel, pressing his cheek against Nancy’s arm, felt the muscles
contract. A crack by the door and the sound of a heavy stirring
answered the creak of the sofa. There began, interrupted by silences,
the sound of something slithering, dragging itself along the wall.
     
“Noel!”
     
A shudder beside her.
     
“Noel, stop it now. It’s too real, I can’t bear it. Stop . . . You’ve
won! Oh, STOP it!”
     
“But, my God,” whispered Noel. “ I don’t know what it is . . . ”
     
“What have you done?” Nancy laughed with horror. “There is something in here?”
     
“Yes . . . ”
     
Noel felt he must crouch till he died in the silent blackness,
counting the thuds of his heart. This horror had taken life from
himself, had been born of his mind and was creeping about the
room. When a fumbling began not far away and a hand seemed to
be feeling its way towards them over the furniture, he reached out
an arm for Nancy and held her against him. The delusion of life
showed its falseness, of action, security, manly and womanly
freedom from fear; they were plumbing together once more as in
childhood the terrible deep. They were very close.
     
“Oh, fool,” shivered Nancy. “Oh, fool; oh, you fool!” Her breath
ran through his hair.
     
“Be quiet,” he cried, putting up a hand and crushing her lips to
silence. A yard away, a chair slid forward softly over the parquet.
“Find the light!”
     
“Oh, I can’t, I daren’t put my hand out. Oh, Noel . . .”
     
Kneeling up, scarcely breathing, an arm still round Nancy, Noel
felt along the back of her chair for the lamp at her other elbow. He
touched the base of the lamp, heard it rattle, and his fingers crept
up to the switch. At this moment a cold hand, shaking a little,
closed on his own. “Now,” thought Noel, “I am finished.” Holding
Nancy against him, his cheek against hers, he waited while the grip
on his fingers, compelling them, wrenched round the switch.
    Very tall, going on up indefinitely towards the ceiling and
spangled over with arabesques from the shade, the grey figure of
Ripon loomed over them. With the revelation of his material
presence, his identity flashed upon Noel. A shoe was tucked beneath
either of Ripon’s armpits: Noel looked at his silver-grey huge feet
planted squarely apart on the parquet.
    “I thought I heard you in here,” said Ripon. “Am I in the way?”
Nancy, pale and insolent, stared up with dilated eyes.
“Is that the way one usually comes into one’s drawing-room?” she
    asked in a voice over which she had not recovered control.
“Is this the way one usually entertains one’s visitors?” asked Ripon,
     
staring back.
     
Nancy shrugged, a gesture of disdain and helplessness. “A game,”
     
she said, “a favourite game of Noel’s. This is Noel – Ripon. Ripon –
     
Noel.”
     
Ripon turned, half bowed, and for the first time bent his dark,
     
intent and heavy gaze on Noel. Noel’s eyes, running agitatedly over
     
that immense and too-well-tailored person, focused themselves
     
under the chin, upon a flashing tie-pin. “Bounder!” he thought – the
     
word was balm to him – “Rotten cad!”
     
“I’m afraid,” he said at last uneasily, “you’ll think me pretty mad.
     
We were playing ghosts; I frightened Nancy. I didn’t know we had
     
an audience. An audience generally . . . declares itself.”
He glanced down and dusted the knees of his trousers: a gesture
     
purely, for Ripon’s parquet had been immaculate.
     
Then he realised that the big man was looking no longer at
     
himself but back again at Nancy. He had been brushed clear of
     
Ripon’s thoughts like a fly. Ripon’s eyes beneath his beetle brows
had an uneasy, tortured look, like some large dog’s whose trust in
life has been