Her great moist eyes turned to the thing in her arms; she saw the staring glassy eyes, the hard wax face and rose, setting it aside.
“It is a lie,” she said with the quiet of agony. “You are dead.”
She laid her face against the wall and woe shook her whole body.
“God!—are these things just?” she said with clenched hands. “Is it right these things should be?—that I should live to think upon his grave?”
Her voice echoed through the bare rafters; a sudden gust of wind blew the window open and the candle out; she gave a cry of terror and rushed from the room, shutting the door behind her. At a swift regardless pace she came down the stairs till she reached a landing where a dim lamp hung.
She paused there a moment as if she had forgotten where she would go, and while she hesitated a door was opened and the Master of Stair stepped out. His wife shrank back against the wall, but he stopped and their eyes met.
He noticed her face, her fallen hair, the dust upon her dress.
“Who are you? Where have you been?” he asked, starting back.
Her side she drew herself still further away; her lips formed a half-smile; very foolish, very tragic.
He swept past her down the stairs, fiercely as though the Furies were after him; the clatter of his sword on the marble echoed through the empty house.