When she reached her home on the upper west side that Saturday night, she felt the Thing the moment she stepped across the threshold. She felt it shrouded, ambiguous, vague. But it was there. Very small at first. Hidden somewhere in the huge, square entrance hall and peeping in upon her mind.
She wondered what it was, and what it might be doing there.
So she called to her maid:
"Annette! Annette!"
She did not call to reassure herself. For the woman was not afraid. That was it exactly; she was not afraid from first to last. If she had been, she would have switched on the light.
But she did not. She left the flat in darkness. Deliberately.
And that, again, was strange since hitherto she had always hated darkness and half-light and seeping, graying shadow; had always wanted and gloried in full, orange bursts of color—big, clustering, massive, cruel lights. She had just that sort of complexion—pallid, you know, smooth, with her color rising evenly, dawn-hued and tender, and never in patches and blurry streaks.
