If I had been a crying sort of girl, I should certainly have cried then, imagining that.
But I was never a girl for tears. I changed into my nightgown, put my cloak back on above it, and stood in my stockings and my unbuttoned shoes. I looked at the shut door at the head of the bed, and at the key-hole in it. I wondered if Maud kept a key on her side and-had it turned. I wondered what I would see, if I went and bent and looked—and who can think a thing like that, and not go and do it? But when I did go, on tiptoe, and stoop to the lock, I saw a dim light, a shadow—nothing clearer than that, no sign of any kind of sleeping or wakeful or fretful girl, or anything.
I wondered, though, if I might hear her breathing. I straightened up, and held my breath, and put my ear flat to the door. I heard my heart-beat, and the roaring of my blood. I heard a small, tight sound, that must have been the creeping of a worm or a beetle in the wood.
Beyond that, there was nothing—though I listened for a minute, maybe two. Then I gave it up. I took off my shoes and my garters and got into bed: the sheets were cold and felt damp, like sheets of