"Quick! That door!" she breathed frantically. "They must not find it locked!" She snatched up her outer wraps, slipped them on, and, with a most marvellous display of composure, assumed a languid attitude in a chair. Outwardly, Myrna Bliss was quite calm and undisturbed again. "Quick! The door—quick!" she whispered.
The door! Some one was coming! Yes, of course! His brain was reeling, stupefied. The door! He fumbled in his pocket for the key, and in a mechanical way turned it in the lock. And then they were trooping into the salon, a dozen of them, men and women.
"Wasn't it a charming idea!" some one exclaimed in effusive greeting. "But the credit is all Myrna's, of course. We've come, you know, to—"
Jean did not hear any more. With a start, he raised his head and glanced down the room. Myrna's idea—this! A little twisted smile of understanding came to Jean's lips. Self-possessed, animated, she was already the centre of a group where everybody was talking at once.
And then Paul Valmain's pale, aristocratic, esthetic face came before him. The man was bowing, murmuring polite conventionalities; only somehow the man's eyes, instead of meeting his, seemed to be set with peculiar fixedness upon some object. Automatically, Jean followed their direction with his own—to his own hand hanging at his side.
The door key was still clasped in his fingers!
— III —
IN THE DEAD OF THE NIGHT
The temptation was very great. But what would Father Anton say? What would Madame Garneau, with whom she lodged, think? To go out at this time of night! It was very late. It was long after midnight, because it was very long ago when she had heard some distant church clock strike twelve—and since then it had struck many times, the quarters, the half hours, only she had lost count.