While she does it, I unlock my little wooden box and whisper cruel words to my mother''s portrait. I close my eyes. I think, / shall not study your face!—but, once having thought it, I know I must do it or lie sleepless and grow ill. I look hard into her pale eyes. Do you think of your mother, he said, and feel her madness in you?
Do I?
I put the portrait away, and call for Agnes to bring me a tumbler of water. I take a drop of my old medicine—then, unsure that that will calm me, I take another. Then I lie still, my hair put back. My hands, inside their gloves, begin to tingle. Agnes stands and waits. Her own hair is let down—coarse hair, red hair, coarser and redder than ever against the fine white stuff of her nightdress. One slender collar-bone is marked a delicate blue with what is
perhaps only a shadow, but might—I cannot remember—be a bruise.
I feel the drops at last, sour in my stomach.
''That''s all,'' I say. ''Go on.''⊙思⊙兔⊙網⊙文⊙檔⊙共⊙享⊙與⊙在⊙線⊙閱⊙讀⊙
I hear her climb into her bed, draw up her blankets. There is a silence. After a little time there comes a creak, a whisper, the faint groan of machinery: my uncle''s clock, shifting its gears. I lie and wait for sleep. It does not come. Instead, my limbs grow restless and begin to twitch. I feel, too hard, my blood—I feel the bafflement of it, at the dead points of my fingers and my toes. I raise my head, call softly: ''Agnes!'' She does not hear; or hears, but fears to answer. ''Agnes!''—At last, the sound of my own voice unnerves me. I give it up, lie still. The clock groans again, then strikes. Then come other sounds, far-off. My uncle keeps early hours. Closing doors, lowered voices, shoes upon the stairs: the gentlemen are leaving the drawing-room and going each to their separate chambers.