Braiding up her hair she sat gazing at herself in the mirror while her detached thoughts drifted almost anywhere—back to Spring Pond and
the Hotel Greensleeve, back to her mother, to the child cross-legged on the floor,—back to her father, and how he sat there dead in his leather chair;—back to the bar, and the red gleam of the stove, and a boy and girl in earnest conversation there in the semi-darkness, eating peach turnovers—
She turned her head, leisurely: the electric bell had sounded twice before she realised that she ought to pull the wire which opened the street door below.
So she got up, pulled the wire, and then sauntered out into the sitting-room and set the door ajar, not worrying about her somewhat intimate costume because it was too late for tradesmen, and there was nobody else to call on her or on her sisters excepting other girls known to them all.
The sitting-room seemed chilly. Half listening for the ascending footsteps and the knocking, partly absorbed in other thoughts, she seated herself and lay back in the dingy arm-chair, before the radiator, elevating her dainty feet to the top of it and crossing them.
A gale was now blowing outside; invisible rain, or more probably sleet, pelted and swished across the curtained panes. Far away in the city, somewhere, a fire-engine rushed clanging through cañons, storm-swept, luminously obscure. Her nickel alarm clock ticked loudly in the room; the radiator clicked and fizzed and snapped.
Presently she heard a step on the stair, then in the corridor outside her door. Then came the knocking on
the door but unexpectedly loud, vigorous and impatient.
And Athalie, surprised, twisted around in her chair, looking over her shoulder at the door.