restraint.

    At its foot, te of a human figure.

    I froze.

    ted laboriously, releasing gasping puffs of breatful grunts.

    In a long, sloo explain ter’s garden at nigantly  needing even to t tart, it  Maurice kneeling on t unlikely person to find in t never occurred to me to   Judit, calm, Judit  in t? Impossible. I did not need to consider t.

    Instead, in t second, my mind reeled to and fro a imes bets.

    It er.

    It couldn’t be Miss inter.

    It er because… because it ell. I could sense it. It was .

    It couldn’t be er er oo uno bend to pluck out a  alone croucurbing tic fashion.

    It  Miss inter.

    But somee everyt was.

    t first second  finally came, was sudden.

    the figure froze… swiveled… rose… and I knew.

    Miss inter’s eyes. Brilliant, supernatural green.

    But not Miss inter’s face.

    A patctled fles told of former beauty, ted graft of we flesh.

    Emmeline! Miss inter’s this house!

    My mind urmoil; blood  me unblinking, and I realized sartled t still, so be under t into immobility.

    S to recover. In an urgent gesture soward me and, in a ring of senseless sounds.

    Be slo even stammer urned and  of t. retcook er ch of churned-up soil.

    Foxes indeed.

    Once t o persuade myself t I . t I  in my sleep I  Adeline’s to me and , unintelligible message. But I kne ed. t infuriating, tuneless five-note fragment. La la la la la.

    I stood, listening, until i