Page:Richard Marsh--The joss, a reversion.djvu/122

110 She began to bustle about the room.

“I thought you were dying for want of sleep. Aren’t you going to get between the sheets? There is a bed, and there are sheets, though I should hardly like to swear that they have been washed since someone slept between them last. When are you going to begin to undress?”

“Undress? Do you imagine that I intend to remove so much as a stitch of clothing while I remain beneath this roof?”

“Do you propose to sleep in your boots then?”

“If I am to sleep at all, and I am more than half disposed to hope that sleep may not visit my eyelids till I am out of this dreadful place, I propose to do so in what I stand up in. Pollie, have you ever heard of people’s hair turning white in the course of a single night? I shouldn’t be at all surprised if mine did. It feels as if it were changing colour now.”

She stared as if she could not make me out. I wondered if she was noting the transformation which was taking place in my hair; if it had already become so obvious. Then she broke into peal after peal of laughter. The tears started to my eyes. Just as I was about to really cry there came a crash which shook the house.

It sounded as if someone had opened a door in the passage and shut it with a bang.