They shook me, and did not answer. So then I fell silent and, again, tried hard to study the way they took me. I was also growing afraid. I had had an idea in my head—that I think I had got from a picture, or a play—of how a madhouse should be; and so far, this house was not like it. I thought, ''They have got me in the place where the doctors and nurses live. Now they''ll take me to the mad bit.''—I think I supposed it would be something like a dungeon or a gaol. But we walked only down more drab-coloured corridors, past door after drab-coloured door, and I began to look about me and see little things—such as, the lamps being ordinary brass ones, but with strong wire guards about the flames; and the doors having fancy latches, but ugly locks; and the walls having, here and there, handles, that looked as though they might, if you turned them,
ring bells. And finally it broke upon me that this was the madhouse after all; that it had once been an ordinary gentleman''s house; that the walls had used to have pictures and looking-glasses on them, and the floors had used to have rugs; but that now, it had all been made over to madwomen—that it was, in its way, like a smart and handsome person gone mad itself.
And I can''t say why, but somehow the idea was worse and put me in more of a creep than if the place had looked like a dun