‘Marjorie!’
‘It got into the bed.’
‘You imagined it.’
‘I didn’t imagine it. I heard it crawl along the sheets, till it found a way between them, and then it crawled towards me. And I felt it—against my face.—And it’s there now.’
‘Where?’
She raised the forefinger of her left hand.
‘There!—Can’t you hear it droning?’
She listened, intently. I listened too. Oddly enough, at that instant the droning of an insect did become audible.
‘It’s only a bee, child, which has found its way through the open window.’
‘I wish it were only a bee, I wish it were.—Sydney, don’t you feel as if you were in the presence of evil? Don’t you want to get away from it, back into the presence of God?’
‘Marjorie!’
‘Pray, Sydney, pray!—I can’t!—I don’t know why, but I can’t!
She flung her arms about my neck
