An early train--
In the act of dropping, half asleep, into the position of slumber, he
halted sharply, propped up on an elbow. A sense invaded him of
something unusual, portentous, close by. There wasn't a sound, a
flicker of audible movement, a break in the curtain of dark; yet he was
breathless in a strained oppressive attention. It was impossible to say
whether his disturbance came from within or without, whether it was in
his pounding blood or in the room around him. Then he heard a soft
thick settling rustle, the sound a fur coat might make falling to the
floor; and, simultaneously, a vague slender whiteness appeared on the
night. A swift conviction fastened on him that here he had been
overtaken by fate; by what, for so long, he had invited. Out of the
insubstantiality a whispering voice spoke to him:
"Lee, where are you? It's so cold."
IV
Twice, the following day, Lee telephoned to Fanny, but neither time was
she in the house; and, kept at his office, he was obliged to take an
inconvenient train that made a connection for Eastlake. When Lee
reached the countryside opening in the familiar hilly vistas he had, in
place of the usual calm recognitions through a run of hardly more than
an hour, a sense of having come a long way to a scene from which he had
been absent for years. It appeared to him remarkably tranquil and self-
contained--safe was the word which came to him.
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