The stair was dark as the very
heart of the night. He groped his way down. The spiral stair is
the safest of all: you cannot tumble far ere brought up by the
inclosing cylinder. Arrived at the bottom, and feeling about, he
could not find the door to the outer air which the butler had shown
him; it was wall wherever his hands fell. He could not find again
the stair he had left; he could not tell in what direction it lay.
He had got into a long windowless passage connecting two wings of
the house, and in this he was feeling his way, fearful of falling
down some stair or trap. He came at last to a door--low-browed like
almost all in the house. Opening it--was it a thinner darkness or
the faintest gleam of light he saw? And was that again the sound he
had followed, fainter and farther off than before--a downy
wind-wafted plume from the skirt of some stray harmony? At such a
time of the night surely it was strange! It must come from one who
could not sleep, and was solacing himself with sweet sounds,
breathing a soul into the uncompanionable silence! If so it was, he
had no right to search farther! But how was he to return? He dared
hardly move, lest he should be found wandering over the house in the
dead of night like a thief, or one searching after its secrets. He
must sit down and wait for the morning: its earliest light would
perhaps enable him to find his way to his quarters!
Feeling about him a little, his foot struck against the step of a
stair.
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