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Love from

Rosamund

When she had finished her letter, there was nothing to do but go to bed; but it was only eleven o'clock and she could not fall asleep. The night was much too quiet; the silence seemed to lie on her like a weight. She longed for noise, for footsteps in the house, for the sound of wheels outside. It was dark, too. She had drawn back the curtain to find a huge black sky hanging like another curtain outside the window. There were pinholes in the curtain with winks of far-off light, but no comforting glow of a street lamp to freak the room with cheerful patterns and make a tent of brightness in the street below. After about an hour she got up and looked out, but she could see only dim, lumpish shapes, the blocks of yew hedges and garden trees. The night seemed to breathe over her from the invisible grass. Then suddenly there was a terrible cry, the despairing screech of some creature surprised and lost. A faint, answering cluck or chuckle came from somewhere near, then silence fell deep, unchanging, but much more terrible than before. Rosamund took one leap into her bed, pulled the bedclothes over her, sobbed for a moment against the pillow, and then, as if fear and strangeness had at last exhausted her, fell asleep.