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springhouse.
    Don’t try to think—don’t stand here in the darkness, listening. There is danger in waiting; danger in thinking.
    “Go to your room,” Dennis had said, “at once.”
    She groped in the darkness. Something brushed her hand lightly and seemed to move away and returned. A fern—one of the flowers—she was standing in the little alcove made by the french windows; after dinner they’d all gone into the drawing room to look at the flowers. How were they arranged? She couldn’t remember the arrangement, for she’d been thinking of that mad scene with Dennis. Of the thing she was to say to Ben. And they had insisted on her coming with them to look at the floral arrangement; three weary-looking men in wrinkled white smocks, boxes and burlap-wrapped ferns and green raffia trailing around. Gertrude in the middle of it in her ruby velvet with her pale eyes glittering. Amelia talking to Ben about the huge white chrysanthemums. Ben …
    No one had thought of this—of murder.
    And she mustn’t think of it now. This was to have been the altar—where she was to stand in her white satin gown.
    She groped among the flowers, which swayed into blackness, and she had to remind herself that they were really ferns and great white chrysanthemums. Good, she was through them now; only their scent remained in the thick, moveless blackness. Opposite the improvised altar was a sort of aisle through small gilt chairs which were already arranged in ranks across the room. “Family and intimate friends were present …” She touched the smooth round back of a chair and, fumbling a little, found the aisle. That was simple, to go from one chair to another directly to the door. And the door opened easily, with only the faintest creek of its old hinges.
    There was, as usual at night, no light in the hall, but once there she was more certain. Nothing had been changed there, no furniture moved aside and rearranged for the wedding. She crossed it, her feet making furtive little taps on the thin old rugs, her yellow gown swishing, whispering a little along the floor. In spite of the familiarity and certainty she felt, she became confused in crossing that blank space of complete blackness and brought up against the newel post unexpectedly. Her whole body seemed to leap, and her heart rocked her with its beating. But it was only the newel post. Now up those narrow old stairs and along the hall. Dennis had told her to go to her room at once.
    It was a goal; vaguely she felt that when she reached it and turned on the lights something would shift and things would become natural and real again.
    It was the first time she had thought of turning on lights; but light would be dangerous; better not.
    The banister was smooth and cool to her touch; she clutched her skirt in her other hand, pulling it high over her wet, silk ankles so she would not trip. She knew the house as she knew her own small hand. She knew that stairway and the creak on the third step from the bottom. The small, stealthy creak of weight on the dry old step.
    She avoided it, not quite sure she’d counted the steps right, relieved when the next step and the next did not, either of them, utter that small sharp rasp, clear and distinct in the midnight silence of the hall.
    That step and the next; she was near the top really when the third step creaked.
    Creaked once and stopped.
    Even her heart stopped beating to listen. It was the step near the bottom of the stairs, the third step. No doubt about that; she knew it too well.
    But there was no further sound from the cavernous blackness below her. Ceilings were high in the old house; the stairway beautiful and old but very narrow. So narrow two people could barely pass upon it.
    Two people!
    It was Dennis!
    She was so certain of it, and the certainty came with such a rush of relief, that she turned and clutched the banister and whispered into the darkness below:
    “Dennis—Dennis. Here I am.”
    He did not