“Is this why they wait and watch?” he asked himself with rather a shaking heart, “for the time when I shall join them—­or refuse to join them?  Does the decision rest with me after all, and not with them?”

And it was at this point that the sinister character of the adventure first really declared itself, and he became genuinely alarmed.  The stability of his rather fluid little personality was at stake, he felt, and something in his heart turned coward.

Why otherwise should he have suddenly taken to walking stealthily, silently, making as little sound as possible, for ever looking behind him?  Why else should he have moved almost on tiptoe about the passages of the practically deserted inn, and when he was abroad have found himself deliberately taking advantage of what cover presented itself?  And why, if he was not afraid, should the wisdom of staying indoors after sundown have suddenly occurred to him as eminently desirable?  Why, indeed?

And, when John Silence gently pressed him for an explanation of these things, he admitted apologetically that he had none to give.

“It was simply that I feared something might happen to me unless I kept a sharp look-out.  I felt afraid.  It was instinctive,” was all he could say.  “I got the impression that the whole town was after me—­wanted me for something; and that if it got me I should lose myself, or at least the Self I knew, in some unfamiliar state of consciousness.  But I am not a psychologist, you know,” he added meekly, “and I cannot define it better than that.”

It was while lounging in the courtyard half an hour before the evening meal that Vezin made this discovery, and he at once went upstairs to his quiet room at the end of the winding passage to think it over alone.  In the yard it was empty enough, true, but there was always the possibility that the big woman whom he dreaded would come out of some door, with her pretence of knitting, to sit and watch him.  This had happened several times, and he could not endure the sight of her.  He still remembered his original fancy, bizarre though it was, that she would spring upon him the moment his back was turned and land with one single crushing leap upon his neck.  Of course it was nonsense, but then it haunted him, and once an idea begins to do that it ceases to be nonsense.  It has clothed itself in reality.

He went upstairs accordingly.  It was dusk, and the oil lamps had not yet been lit in the passages.  He stumbled over the uneven surface of the ancient flooring, passing the dim outlines of doors along the corridor—­doors that he had never once seen opened—­rooms that seemed never occupied.  He moved, as his habit now was, stealthily and on tiptoe.

Half-way down the last passage to his own chamber there was a sharp turn, and it was just here, while groping round the walls with outstretched hands, that his fingers touched something that was not wall—­something that moved.  It was soft and warm in texture, indescribably fragrant, and about the height of his shoulder; and he immediately thought of a furry, sweet-smelling kitten.  The next minute he knew it was something quite different.