Chapter 23 - Page 2

curving over her--as
it curved over the hideous house and all the rest of the world.
How high--how immense--how fathomlessly still it was--how it seemed
as if there could be nothing else--that nothing else could be
real! Her hands were clenched together hard and fiercely, as she
scrambled to her knees and uttered a of prayer--not a child's--rather
the cry of a young Fury making a demand.

"Perhaps a girl is Nothing," she cried, "-a girl locked up in a
room! But, perhaps, she is Something--she may he real too! Save
me-save me! But if you won't save me, let me be killed!"

She knelt silent after it for a few minutes and then she sank down
and lay on the floor with her face on her arm.

How it was possible that even young and worn-out as she was, such
peace as sleep could overcome her at such a time, one cannot say.
But in the midst of her torment she was asleep.

But it was not for long. She wakened with a start and sprang to
her feet shivering. The carriages were still coming and going with
guests for the big house opposite. It could not be late, though
she seemed to have been in the place for years--long enough to feel
that it was the hideous centre of the whole earth and all sane and
honest memories were a dream. She thought she would begin to walk
up and down the room.

But a sound she heard at this very instant made her stand stock
still. She had known there would be a sound at last--she had
waited for it all the time--she had known, of course, that it would
come, but she had not even tried to guess whether she would hear
it early or late. It would be the sound of the turning of the
handle of the locked door. It had come. There it was! The click
of the lock first and then the creak of the turned handle!

She went to the window again and stood with her back against it,
so that her body was outlined against the faint light. Would the
person come in the dark, or would he carry a light? Something
began to whirl in her brain. What was the low, pumping thump she
seemed to hear and feel at the same time? It was the awful thumping
of her heart.

The door opened--not stealthily, but quite in the ordinary way.
The person who came in did not move stealthily either. He came
in as though he were making an evening call. How tall and straight
his body was, with a devilish elegance of line against the background
of light in the hall. She thought she saw a white flower on his
lapel as his overcoat fell back. The leering footman had opened
the for him.

"Turn on the lights." A voice she knew gave the order, the leering
footman obeyed, touching a spot high on the wall.

She had vaguely and sickeningly felt almost sure that it would
be