"Go now," she said, curtly. The man Ugo pocketed the money with a darkening face and turned to depart. At the door he hesitated, making as though he would say a final word. But the girl cut him short.
"Go!" she reiterated, and he had no choice but to obey.
"I should have been in peril of having my ear nicked," he said, under his breath, as he crossed the threshold. "It's just as well that I kept my tongue between my teeth and concluded not to mind Quinton Edge's business." He closed the door.
It had grown quite dark, and the fire was making its last stand for life. Only one small piece of wood remained unconsumed, and the flame licked at it lazily, like a beast of prey hanging over a carcass, gorged to repletion and yet unwilling to give over employment so delicious. Suddenly the girl rose to her feet and went to one of the long windows that looked out upon the street. The casement shook and rattled under the gale's rough hand. Hardly knowing what she did, she flung the window wide open.
In an instant she seemed to have been transported into the midst of the tumult, her face lashed by windy whips, her eyes blinded by fine particles of frozen snow, her ears deafened by the multitudinous voices of the storm sprites shrieking to their fellows. Something in her nature, fierce and untamed, leaped forth to meet the tempest. Intoxicated by the strong wine of its fury, she flung out her arms, half fearing, half hoping that she might be swept away, whirled like some wild sea-bird, into the heart of the madness. A strong hand pulled her back.
"Esmay!" shrieked a voice in her ear. "Esmay!"
Loudly as the call must have been uttered, it came to her, as though from a great distance, thin and of an infinite littleness. Yet she allowed herself to be drawn back into the room, and made no demur to the closing of the window.
It was a tall, finely built woman of thirty or thereabouts who stood beside her—a woman with a dark, passionate face shaded by a mop of raven hair as coarse as a horse's mane. "Esmay!" she said again, with an accent of wondering reproach.
The girl stood silent, motionless for a moment; then, with a swift intake of her breath:
"Don't be angry, Nanna, but something is going to happen. I've got to laugh or to cry—I don't know which."