A barrier stretched across the drive. Attached to it was a notice. Danger. Keep Out. Noticing a join in the fence where the sections were just lodged together, I shifted a panel, slipped inside and pulled it to behind me.

Skirting the cold shoulder I came to the front of the house. Between the first and second bays, six broad, low steps led up to a paneled double door. The steps were flanked by a pair of low pedestals, on which were mounted two giant cats carved out of some dark, polished material. The undulations of their anatomy were so persuasively carved that, running my fingers over one, I half expected fur, was startled by the cool hardness of the stone.

It was the ground-floor window of the third bay that was marked by the darkest fire-staining. Perched on a chunk of fallen masonry, I was tall enough to peer inside. What I saw caused a deep disquiet to bloom in my chest. There is something universal, something familiar to all, in the concept of a room. Though my bedroom over the shop and my childhood bedroom at my parents' house and my bedroom at Miss Winter's are all very different, they nonetheless share certain elements, elements that remain constant in all places and for all people. Even a temporary encampment has something overhead to protect it from the elements, space for a person to enter, move about, and leave, and something that permits you to distinguish between inside and outside. Here there was none of that.

Beams had fallen, some at one end only so that they cut the space diagonally, coming to rest on the heaps of masonry, woodwork and other indistinguishable material that filled the room to the level of the window. Old birds' nests were wedged in various nooks and angles. The birds must have brought seeds; snow and rain had flooded in with the sunlight, and somehow, in this wreck of a place, plants were growing: I saw the brown winter branches of buddleia, and elders grown spindly reaching for the light. Like a pattern on wallpaper, ivy scrambled up the walls. Craning my neck, I looked up, as into a dark tunnel. Four tall walls were still intact, but instead of seeing a ceiling, I saw only four thick beams, irregularly spaced, and beyond them more empty space before another few beams, then the same again and again. At the end of the tunnel was light. The sky.

Not even a ghost could survive here.

It was almost impossible to think that once there had been draperies, furnishings, paintings. Chandeliers had lit up what was now illuminated by the sun. What had it been, this room? A drawing room, a music room, a dining room?

I squinted at the mass of stuff heaped in the room. Out of the jumble of unrecognizable stuff that had once been a home, something caught my eye. I had taken it at first for a half-fallen beam, but it wasn't thick enough. And it appeared to have been attached to the wall. There was another. Then another. At regular intervals, these lengths of wood seemed to have joints in them, as if other pieces of wood had once been attached at right angles. In fact, there, in a corner, was one where these other sections were still present.

Knowledge tingled in my spine.

These beams were shelves. This jumble of nature and wrecked architecture was a library. In a moment I had clambered through the glassless window. Carefully I made my way around, testing my footing at every step. I peered into corners and dark crevices, but there were no books. Not that I had expected any-they would never survive the conditions. But I hadn't been able to help looking.

For a few minutes I concentrated on my photographs. I took shots of the glassless window frames, the timber planks that used to hold books, the heavy oak door in its massive frame.

Trying to get the best picture of the great stone fireplace, I was bending from the waist, leaning slightly sideways, when I paused. I swallowed, noted my slightly raised heartbeat. Was it something I had heard? Or felt? Had something shifted deep in the arrangement of rubble beneath my feet? But no. It was nothing. All the same, I picked my way carefully to the edge of the room, where there was a hole in the masonry large enough to step through.

I was in the main hallway. Here were the high double doors I had seen from outside. The staircase, being made of stone, had survived the fire intact. A broad sweep upward, the handrail and balustrades now ivy clad, the solid lines of its architecture were nonetheless clear: a graceful curve widening into a shell-like curl at its base. A kind of fancy upsidedown apostrophe.

The staircase led to a gallery that must once have run the entire width of the entrance hall. To one side there was only a jagged edge of floorboards and a drop to the stone floor below. The other side was almost complete. The vestiges of a handrail along the gallery, and then a corridor. A ceiling, stained but intact; a floor; doors even. It was the first part of the house I had seen that appeared to have escaped the general destruction. It looked like somewhere you could live.

I took a few quick pictures and then, testing each new board beneath my feet before shifting my weight, moved warily into the corridor. The handle of the first door opened onto a sheer drop, branches and blue sky. No walls, no ceiling, no floor, just fresh outdoors air.

I pulled the door closed again and edged along the corridor, determined not to be unnerved by the dangers of the place. Watching my feet all the time, I came to the second door.

I turned the handle and let the door swing open.

There was movement!

My sister!

Almost I took a step toward her.

Almost.

Then I realized. A mirror. Shadowy with dirt and tarnished with dark spots that looked like ink.

I looked down to the floor I had been about to step onto. There were no boards, only a drop of twenty feet onto hard stone flags.

I knew now what I had seen, yet still my heart continued its frenzy. I raised my eyes again, and there she was. A white-faced waif with dark eyes, a hazy, uncertain figure trembling inside the old frame.

She had seen me. She stood, hand raised toward me longingly, as though all I had to do was step forward to take it. And would it not be the simplest solution, all told, to do that and at last rejoin her?

How long did I stand there, watching her wait for me?

"No," I whispered, but still her arm beckoned me. "I'm sorry." Her arm slowly fell. Then she raised a camera and took a photograph of me. I was sorry for her. Pictures through glass never come out. I know.

I've tried.

I stood with my hand on the handle of the third door. The rule of three, Miss Winter had said. But I wasn't in the mood for her story anymore. Her dangerous house with its indoor rain and trick mirror had lost its interest for me.

I would go. To take photographs of the church? Not even that. I would go to the village store. I would telephone a taxi. Go to the station and from there home.

All this I would do, in a minute. For the time being, I wanted to stay like this, head leaning against the door, fingers on the handle, indifferent to whatever was beyond, and waiting for the tears to pass and my heart to calm itself.

I waited. Then, beneath my fingers, the handle to the third room began to turn of its own accord.