Page:E Nesbit - The Literary Sense.djvu/321



HE opened the window, at which no light shone. All the other windows were darkly shuttered. The night was still: only a faint breath moved among the restless aspen leaves. The ivy round the window whispered hoarsely as the casement, swung back too swiftly, rested against it. She had a large linen sheet in her hands. Without hurry and without delayings she knotted one corner of it to the iron staple of the window. She tied the knot firmly, and further secured it with string. She let the white bulk of the sheet fall between the ivy and the night, then she climbed on to the window-ledge, and crouched there on her knees. There was a heart-sick pause before she grasped the long twist of the sheet as it hung—let her knees slip from the supporting stone and swung suddenly, by her hands. Her elbows and wrists