Yet there was something--he told me later--that gripped him suddenly as he was half-way down the stairs and held him in a kind of agony which he could in no way describe.

It was connected with the room behind that lighted door.

It was not that he feared for his master, nor for Frank.

It was something else altogether.

(What a pity it is that our system of education teaches neither self-analysis nor the art of narration!) He stood there--he told me--he should think for the better part of ten minutes, unable to move either way, listening, always listening, to the voice that rose and sank and lapsed now and then into silences that were worse than all, and telling himself vigorously that he was not at all frightened.
It was a creak somewhere in the old house that disturbed him and snapped the thin, rigid little thread that seemed to paralyze his soul; and still in a sort of terror, though no longer in the same stiff agony, he made his way down the three or four further steps of the flight, laid hold of the handle, turned it and peered in.
Frank was lying quiet so far as he could see.