She hid her face a moment in her hands. And lifting them again, her
eyes laughed hard and strong in her fragile face.
“Oh, patience! Bother patience! Why should we wait? Why can’t we know
now? I want to know. If Philip were only here, I’d know soon enough.
The others don’t count. Really ... how wonderfully simple when there
are only two. And you call for patience. Timid! I’ll phone for Philip.
Yes, I will. If he’s home, I’ll phone and I’ll go over there: or have
him come here quick.... You really should meet him.” Her smile was
above malice. “And I’ll know perhaps, just if I look at him.”
She danced toward the door. There was a knock that stopped her. She
moved slowly, suddenly transfigured, and turned the knob. A maid stood
hesitant.
“Miss Fayn, it’s something urgent, Miss. Your father would like to
speak to you just a minute.”
Mildred looked at me. There was a pallor over the bloom of her cheeks.
Her eyes still danced, unknowing, within an invading pallor. I was
alone.
* * * * *
A stillness lay within the room that had rung and sung with the dancing
laughter of Mildred. Mildred was gone: and someone else is here! Who
is here, blighting this room? I stand and feel a horror rise from my
loins like a gray cloud ... up, up my sides it crawls: lifting my hair
it passes. I forced myself to look over each shoulder: nothing. It
is gone. What is it that was here and that I have not seen and that I
felt I knew? A foul dark mass in the shrine of Mildred’s room. But the
horror that scudded through me is away. Thoughts come. Good thoughts.
Chasing all others.--Mildred is mine, is mine! And she is wonderful
beyond my wonder.
... She opened the door and I shuddered for on her face was the
darkness that had been alone with me.
“Oh,” came her voice, reed-like and stripped. “Oh, he is dead.”