“I was so close to dreadful things there,” she murmured. “It was so—”
A man’s step sounded on the stairs, mounted quickly and then struck a resonant response from the wooden flooring of the hall.
“Who’s that?” she whispered, with hurried alarm, her figure drawn alertly upright as if to rise and fly. “Is that some one coming in? Don’t let them. I don’t want to see any one now.”
The Colonel, after a listening moment, reassured her.
“That’s only Rion,” he said. “You needn’t bother about him. He lives just across the hall.”
She murmured an “Oh!” of relieved comprehension and fell back in the chair.
They were silent for a space, both looking into the heart of the fire, its red light playing on their faces, the woman leaning back languidly, sunk in an apathy of exhausted relief; the man possessed by a sense of contentment more rich and absolute than he had hoped ever again to feel.
THE END
A LIST of IMPORTANT FICTION
THE BOBBS-MERRILL COMPANY
A ROMANCE OF AMERICAN CHIVALRY