"Are you sure? Isn't there some way she could have heard—at the Club?"
He hesitated. He had caught her eyes. They horrified him…. He remembered.
"Why, yes. We were talking—it was the night he first spoke of going over to Nantucket with me. Mrs. Wordling was behind at a near table. I told him we'd better talk lower——"
No sound escaped her. Cairns sprang up at the sight of her uplifted face…. Her eyes turned vaguely toward the door of the little room. He was standing before it. She seemed only to know—like some half-killed creature—that she was hunted and must hide. She couldn't pass him into the little room, but turned behind the screen. He did not hear her step, but something like the rush of a skirt, or a sigh.
There was no sound from the kitchenette. Cairns could not think in this furious stress. After a moment he called.
No answer.
It did not occur to him to go to her. Scores of times he had been in the studio, but he had never passed that screen.
He called again…. Not a breath nor movement in answer. He did not think of her as dead, but stricken with some awful madness. She had stood transfixed…. Yet her old authority was about her. He feared her anger.
"Dear—Beth,—won't you let me come—or do something?… In God's name—what is it?"
He listened intently.