* * * * *

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 canyons,

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.

"Please come in," she said in her calm young voice.




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