[XI]
After one horrible endless moment the figure moved slightly and the corridor was flooded with the soft mellow light from half a dozen electric sconces.
With a half-choked cry of "Sandy!" upon her lips Peaches moved toward him, only to stop short, her face going completely blank. The man was a servant, a valet presumably, carrying a folded suit of clothing carefully over one arm and wearing soft felt shoes, which had been the secret of his noiseless approach. His hair was thickly gray and his face was lined and scarred. He looked perhaps ten years older than Sandro—and yet the likeness was there—unmistakable, though in the full light not by any means so perfect.
"I beg pardon, ladies," he said in a measured voice, withdrawing another step. "The lights should have been on."
Then with a little bow he passed noiselessly down the corridor and entered one of the bedrooms, presumably that occupied by Markheim himself.
Peaches made a little involuntary gesture as if to follow him, stretching out her hands toward his unconscious back, and then, as the door closed upon him, turned to me, her amber eyes afire. She seized me by the wrist in a manner positively painful and dragged me into her room, where she caused me to sit down abruptly and without personal selection upon a sort of hassock, the while she towered over me, fairly glowing with animation—far, far, more like her old self than she had been for almost six years.
"Free!" she said. "Was it? Was it? Oh, Free—say something!"
"It couldn't have been!" I replied shakily. "And yet the resemblance—it was extraordinary!"