"Who else?" answered Vashti, with a little laugh. "Give me your hand, please." He stretched it out obediently, and she took it and clambered in over the sill.
"It is cold outside," she announced, looking around her with something between a shiver and a deliberate shake of her cloak. It was the same furred cloak in which she had come ashore from the Milo. Spray clung to it; and there was spray, too, on her hair. It shone in the lamplight.
"The wind has been getting up ever since sundown," she announced. "I have had a pretty stiff crossing; but the boat is all right, under the Keg of Butter." Then, as he still stared at her, "You don't keep too warm a fire, my friend."
"I had given you up, and was getting ready for bed."
"Then you expected me? The guitar has come?"
Before he could answer she had caught sight of it, and picking it up from the arm-chair where the Commandant had dropped it, settled herself and laid the instrument across her lap.
"Also," she went on, throwing back her cloak, while she examined and tightened the strings, "I will confess that your guest is hungry." She looked up with a laugh. "In fact I came not only to fetch my guitar, but to sup with you and tell you of my doings."
The Commandant turned to the door. His face had suddenly grown gray and desperate.
"Ah, yes—supper, to be sure!" he said, and strode from the room.
As the latch fell behind him, Vashti glanced over her shoulder, put the guitar aside, and arose to stir the fire. The poker plunged into a heap of flaked ashes. "Paper? But the whole grate is choked with it. And, what is more, the whole room smells of burnt paper."