The fire now glowed under its blaze. She took a shovel and strewed a thin layer of small coal over all. Next she spread a doubled sheet of newspaper on the stone floor, and laid on it small sticks and again small coal.
Several times during this fire-lighting Dick had seen her glance, as she turned, at a small mound of stuff which lay on the further side of the hearth. She now lifted it, holding high, with a finger and thumb pinching each shoulder-strap, a woman's frock—a light, slender slip, of these latter days, to add the last exquisite grace.
The fire flared, and shed its changing light on the green silk, so that by its iridescence of interwoven colours, chasing each other as the garment wavered in the draught, he knew it. Amaryllis had worn it at dinner last night.
Under the light of the big lamp in the hall it had made her figure turn colour like an opal. And again, as she ran with that letter to her bedroom, crimson, purple, peacock blue and a green never the same, had chased each other down the swaying folds of her skirt.
The little Dutchwoman eyed the frock, hating while she admired; then suddenly she pushed a fold of the silk into her mouth, and pulled with hands and tore with teeth until long streamers of silk flickered their reds and greens towards the fire.
At last, with a sound between purring and growling, she bunched the stuff together and pushed it down on the coals, lifted the paper tray of fuel from the floor, laid it in the grate over the silk, turned away, threw off her overall and ran cat-footed into the house and out of his sight.
And with her vanished Dick's last shadow of hesitation.
He crept from behind the door, faced its outer edge, laid a hand from each side on its top, set his right foot on the inside knob of the handle, raised his left to the outer, and thence with a quick movement sprang astride of the top.