Now and then he would open the door in passing, and for a moment stand peering in, with a stricken, breath-bating enjoyment of the vague atmosphere of dread, which, issuing, seemed to envelope him in its folds; but to go in was too much, and he neither desired nor endured even the looking in for more than a few seconds.

For so long it was to him like a page in a book of horrors: to go to the other end of it, and in particular to approach the heavily curtained bed, was more than he cared to do without cogent reason.
At the same time he rejoiced to think there was such a room in the house, and attached to it an idea of measureless value--almost as if it had a mysterious window that looked out upon the infinite.
The cause of this feeling was not to himself traceable.

Until old Grannie's story, he had heard no tale concerning it that he remembered: he may have heard hints--a word dropped may have made its impression, and roused fancies outlasting the memory of their origin; for feelings, like memories of scents and sounds, remain, when the related facts have vanished.

What it was about the room that scared him, he could not tell, but the scare was there.

With a companion like Aggie, however, even after hearing Grannie's terrible reminiscence, he was able to be in the room without experiencing worse than that same milder, almost pleasant degree of dread, caused by the mere looking through the door into the strange brooding silence of the place.