The day had been sultry, and sunset brought no relief. Evening fell windstill, breathless.
For once Katherine was glad to obey her little martinet grandmother's arbitrary regulation: Lights out at nine. She sat by her bedroom window looking out over a white, moonlit world, thinking black thoughts. Suddenly she rose, for no better reason, apparently, than that a quick, inner impulse of impatience against herself, must find vent in some outward act.
"It's dreadful! I'm growing bitter, hard, deceitful. I'm living a lie. Acting as if I were obedient, and respectful to her, and—feeling like a rebel every minute in the day. I've got to end it, somehow. I can't go on like this any longer."
Just outside her window a little balcony (the railed-in roof of the porte-cochère) shone like a silver patch against the darker foliage. The shadows of leaves cast an intricate pattern upon the moonlit space, and Katherine gazed at it abstractedly until a moving speck in the motionless night caught her attention, and fixed it. As she watched, the speck became a shape, the shape an automobile moving rapidly, almost noiselessly, toward the house, along the white ribbon of a driveway. Just before her window it stopped.
"Hello!" called Dr. Ballard softly.
Katherine hid a radiant smile in the folds of her shadowy curtain. "Sh!" she cautioned. "You'll wake grandmother."
"Then come down. I've something to tell you."
"No. Too late!"
"Nonsense!"
"I can't."