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held by two maidens, overflowing the cup, going always past their stone smiling faces, their hard curls, on down and down over rocks and marble lilies, under and around marble fish and between the long legs of stone birds, necks always bent, heads always turned curiously. Far, far beyond, in a long sweet movement from the high curved hands of the nymph past the satyr, over the dolphins, between the maidens, leaving behind the lilies and the rocks and the fish and the birds, the moving water must be caught and imprisoned at last in a final narrowing agonizing eddy, twisted and trapped and forced down, pushed underground to run secretly and flow, perhaps, into the ornamental pool before the house, colored blue, and moving only faintly under the wind.
    Roses, she thought: I would like to give Essex a rose. She put her head gently back against the marble bench, tears on her cheeks, and listened to the drops of water singing as they went down the fountain (“Frances, I have waited for you so long . . .” “Impatient, Essex?” “Impatient? Say rather mad . . . burning . . .”). She stirred, and smiled, and lifted her hand in tender protest, and looked upon the marble jeering face of a fiend, set into a shrine beside the bench, roses growing low against his head, dead petals caught between his thrusting teeth.
    â€œFancy,” she called, screaming, “Fancy, Fancy!”
    The moving water in the fountain called “Fancy, Fancy” faintly, and the tortured marble face was warm.
    â€œAunt Fanny?”
    â€œPlease help me. Please come; please hurry!”
    â€œI’m in the house.”
    â€œHurry!”
    â€œI’m coming. I’m holding out my hand. It’s all right, Aunt Fanny, I’m right here.”
    And Aunt Fanny, turning, took hold of Fancy’s hand, and it was warm marble; far away, she heard Fancy’s mocking laughter and her voice singing.
    _____
    Somehow, sobbing, Aunt Fanny came through the mist and into the summer house and in four wide steps was running down the lawn toward the sundial in the darkness, and then she heard a voice. It was huge, not Fancy at all, echoing and sounding around and in and out of her head: FRANCES HALLORAN, it came to her, FRANCES, FRANCES HALLORAN. Twisting as she ran, moving wildly, she put out her hands; FRANCES HALLORAN, the voice went on, FRANCES.
    FRANCES HALLORAN: she was gasping dreadfully for breath, one shoe lost and the grass unexpectedly wet under her stocking: FRANCES HALLORAN, and then she stopped absolutely. There was something there in the darkness hard by the sundial, not a statue, not Essex: “Who?” Aunt Fanny said, cold.
    â€œFrances Halloran—” Remotely.
    This was fear so complete that Aunt Fanny, once Frances Halloran, stood with nothing but ice to clothe her;
was
there something there? Something? Then she thought with what seemed shocking clarity: it is worse if it is not there; somehow it must be real because if it is not real it is in my own head; unable to move, Aunt Fanny thought: It is real.
    â€œFrances?”
    Aunt Fanny moved one hand, blindly. “Father?” she said, without sound. “Father?”
    â€œFrances, there is danger. Go back to the house. Tell them, in the house, tell them, in the house, tell them that there is danger. Tell them in the house that in the house it is safe. The father will watch the house, but there is danger. Tell them.”
    Am I hearing this? Aunt Fanny thought lucidly, and then, fumbling, “Father?”
    â€œThe father comes to his child and says gently that within himself there is no fear; the father comes to his child. Tell them in the house that there is danger.”
    â€œDanger? Father?”
    â€œFrom the sky and from the ground and from the sea there is danger; tell them in the house. There will be black fire and red water and the earth turning and screaming; this will