easy enough to avoid in an ordinary sensible English room. But what could one do with a room with eighteen doors? As soon as ever I had got into bed I became doubly conscious of those nine doors that I couldn't see. It gave me a dreadful creepy sort of feeling. I imagined one of those unseen doors stealthily opening and someone coming in noiselessly, and I felt certain I should get an awful shock in a moment if I wasn't stabbed from behind or smothered straight away. It's so dreadful to think of people whom you can't see peeping in and seeing you. I felt as if I was shut up in a glass house as a sort of peep-show. I imagined eyes at each of the eighteen doors. I crouched down in bed, and tried to make myself invisible. Then I started up filled with a new fear. I was sure I had lost my bearings, and forgotten which door led where. I peered out looking for the bootlace to guide me, but everything looked dim and shadowy. Was the light burning lower, or was it only my imagination? If anything happened I had a presentiment that I should be paralysed and my limbs refuse to move. My throat was already too much parched to scream. Besides, what noise that one frightened woman might make in the inside of a room like that would have the ghost of a chance of being heard outside. Especially as I had carefully locked every door! How could I have been so foolish as to lock every door! If I had only left them all wide open I might have had eighteen chances of escape. Now I had none. I sat up in bed trying
