Eight
I
Hester Argyle was looking at herself in the glass. There was little vanity inher gaze. It was more an anxious questioning with behind it the humilityof one who has never really been sure of herself. She pushed up her hairfrom her forehead, pulled it to one side and frowned at the result. Then, asa face appeared behind hers in the mirror, she started, flinched¹ andswung round apprehensively².
“Ah,” said Kirsten Lindstrom, “you are afraid!”
“What do you mean, afraid, Kirsty?”
“You are afraid of me. You think that I come up behind you quietly andthat perhaps I shall strike you down.”
“Oh, Kirsty, don’t be so foolish. Of course I wouldn’t think anything likethat.”
“But you did think it,” said the other. “And you are right, too, to thinksuch things. To look at the shadows, to start when you see something thatyou do not quite understand. Because there is something here in thishouse to be afraid of. We know that now.”
“At any rate, Kirsty darling,” said Hester, “I needn’t be afraid of you.”
“How do you know?” said Kirsten Lindstrom. “Did I not read in the pa-per a short while back of a woman who had lived with another woman foryears, and then one day suddenly she kills her. Suffocates³ her. Tries toscratch her eyes out. And why? Because, she tells the police very gently,for some time she has seen that the devil is inhabiting the woman. She hadseen the devil looking out of the other woman’s eyes and she knows thatshe must be strong and brave and kill the devil!”
“Oh, well, I remember that,” said Hester. “But that woman was mad.”
“Ah,” said Kirsten. “But she did not know herself that she was mad. Andshe did not seem mad to those round her, because no one knew what wasgoing on in her poor, twisted mind. And so I say to you, you do not knowwhat is going on in my mind. Perhaps I am mad. Perhaps I looked one dayat your mother and thought that she was Antichrist and that I would killher.”
“But, Kirsty, that’s nonsense! Absolute nonsense.”
Kirsten Lindstrom sighed and sat down.
“Yes,” she admitted, “it is nonsense. I was very fond of your mother. Shewas good to me, always. But what I am trying to say to you, Hester, andwhat you have got to understand and believe, is that you cannot say ‘non-sense’ to anything or anyone. You cannot trust me or anybody else.”

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