In the room where, some eight hours before, she and Mrs. Herrick had talked, Flora waited, fully dressed. It had been early when they had separated. The strain of the four together had been terrific; and she was still feeling it, though an hour had passed. She was feeling that, now her situation was upon her, she was alone. Mrs. Herrick could only be near her, not with her, and Kerr was still an unknown quantity--except that he was fire.
And there was Harry, with his terrible certainty, and no apparent thing to account for it. It could not be there were men in the house without the servants remarking it; but in the garden? She peered out upon it. Only tree shadows moved upon the lawn. Nothing glimmered in the walks or drives. The solitude held her like an enchantment. She listened for the small sounds in the house to cease, for the lights in the lower story to go out, proclaiming all the servants were in bed. Even after the stillness she waited--waited to be sure it was the long stillness.
Finally she crept to the door and opened it boldly wide.
She stood where she was upon the threshold trembling in a cruel fright. A gas-jet burning far up at the end of the hall, threw a dim light down the pale, pinkish, naked vista, void of furniture, window or curtain; and, leaning against the blank wall almost opposite her door, and directly facing her, was Harry.
Without speaking they looked at each other. He was fully dressed, but lacking his shoes, as she noted in the acuteness of her startled senses. The furtive suggestion of those shoeless feet struck her with horror--formless, unreasoning. It was like an evil dream to find him there, stolen to her door in the night, waiting outside it without a sound, looking her steadily, hardily in the eye without a word.
She tried to speak, but, with terror sobbing in her throat, the words failed. She made a step forward with a crazy impulse to rush past him.
He straightened, with a quick movement toward her. She recoiled before him, precipitately retreated, closed the door, shot the bolt, and leaned, for faintness, against the wall. She expected each moment to hear him tap. She neither heard a knock nor the sound of soft, departing feet. He was still there! He was on guard! He had had good reason for his terrible certainty! He had foreseen what her plan might be, and she knew he would no more let her get past him down the hall than the turnkey will let the wretched prisoner escape.