"There, you're overwrought," he said. "It's time you got to bed. Reckon you understand me, so we'll give the matter a rest."
He turned with the words, turned in his sturdy, purposeful fashion and went back to his room.
She did not watch him go, but she listened with straining ears for the closing of the door between them. It did not come to her. There was to be no relief from his presence that night. The door remained half-open.
She sat on motionless for a moment or two, listening in a numb, hopeless fashion to his quiet, methodical movements.
She got up sharply at length and began with quivering speed to undress, not daring to linger lest she should have to meet again the straight, unsparing scrutiny of those terribly bright eyes.
Once only, and that just at the last, did she stay a moment and stoop over a small dark object on the floor--something she fancied she had dropped. But the next instant a wild fit of trembling seized her, she stood up again, feeling giddy, physically sick. The thing on the floor was the charred remnant of the moth that had fluttered impotent wings to escape but so short a time before. It lay there shrivelled, lifeless, the wings that had beaten so madly for freedom shattered and consumed in the flame.
She caught her hand to her throat. What evil Fate had decreed that such things should be? Even the tiniest thread of life could not escape the seething whirlpool of destruction.
Sick at heart, she turned and extinguished the candle that had wrought so cruel a doom. The moonlight shone whitely into the room. She went to the window and pulled down the blind; then trembling, she crept to bed. And the darkness covered her soul.
CHAPTER IX
THE INVITATION