But oh, how could she have said the
words! What was it to him? He cared naught for her now and her
cruelties--an old, old story to him, to be sure, told to the end, the
pages shut. And she must needs seem to seek to turn the leaf anew! What
else indeed could he think? Surely she had been beguiled by Gladys'
vicarious sentimentality as to the lure of his coming, even while she had
flouted the possibility.
Suddenly--a sound! It broke upon her absorption so abruptly that in an
instant every muscle was adjusted for flight, though she paused and
looked fearfully over her shoulder. Only an echo, she told her plunging
heart--an echo of her own footfalls in the resonant emptiness of the
deserted place. She had wandered down a long corridor, from which doors
opened only on one side into the big bare dining-room, the chairs all
ranged on the tops of the many round tables, standing at equidistant
intervals. An echo--doubtless that was all. She upbraided herself to have
sustained so sudden and causeless a fright.
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