She paused with a repugnant sense of a lapse of
caution. Then she reflected that bolts and locks could add but little
security in a desert solitude like this, where a marauder might work his
will from September to June with no witnesses but the clouds and winds to
hinder. She had forgotten the insistent declaration of Gladys that she
had seen a light flicker from these blank windows the preceding night.
Indeed, even at the time she had accounted it but the hysteric adjunct of
their panic in the illusion of a stealthy step on the veranda of the
bungalow. She was animated only by the simplest impulse of idle curiosity
when she laid her hand on the bolt. The big door swung open at once on
well-oiled hinges, and she found herself in the spacious hotel office, on
one side of which were the clerk's desk and the office clock, looking
queerly disconsolate without the loitering groups of humanity wont to
congregate about the counter. The day glared garishly through the great
skylight on the dusty interior; the big windows held expansive sections
of mountain landscape, bronze, blue, and scarlet, like vivid paintings in
frames.
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