Then with returning briskness she got up and found street apparel and left the house.
She went down into the town almost gayly—like the Sylvia of old. In the drug-store she told an exciting little story to the clerk. There had been a nest of scorpions ... would he believe it? In the kitchen! She had been given such a start when the servant had found them. The servant had screamed; quite naturally, too. She had been told that a weak solution, sprinkled on the floor, would drive them away. What was it?... Yes, that was it. She had forgotten.
She received the small phial and paid the price with fingers which were perfectly firm. And then she started back up the hill.
Under a street light she became aware that she was being followed. She turned with a start. It was only a dog—a forlorn little beast which stopped when she stopped, and regarded her with soft, troubled eyes.
She stooped and smoothed the creature’s head. “You mustn’t follow,” she said in a voice like hidden water. “I haven’t any place to take you—nowhere at all!” She went on up the hill. Once she turned and observed that the lost dog stood where she had left him, still imploring her for friendship.
At her door she paused and turned. She leaned against the door-post in a wistful attitude. A hundred lonely, isolated lights were burning across the desert, as far as the eye could reach. They were little lights which might have meant nothing at all to a happier observer; but to Sylvia they told the story of men and women who had joined hands to fight the battle of life; of the sweet, humble activities which keep the home intact—the sweeping of the hearth, the mending of the fire, the expectant glance at the clock, the sound of a foot-fall drawing near. There lay the desert, stretching away to the Sierra Madre, a lonely waste; but it was a paradise to those who tended their lights faithfully and waited with assurance for those who were away.
... She turned and entered her house stealthily.
At the top of the stairs she paused in indecision. Antonia had not heard her enter. (She did not know that the old woman was standing in the kitchen under the picture of the Virgin, with her hands across her eyes like a bandage.) The lovely boudoir called to her, but she would not enter it.
“I will go into the guest-chamber,” she said; “that is the room set apart for strangers. I think I must always have been a stranger here.”
She opened the door quietly.