"

Yet she stood as she was under the glaring light, the letter still
clutched stiffly in her hand, her eyes still staring widely at the
irregular, un-English writing. The letters seemed to writhe and squirm
into life before her distorted vision, to wriggle like a procession of
monstrous insects across the page. Were they insects or were they
reptiles? She asked herself the question dazedly.

"Chris!" Her husband's voice came to her softly through the closed door.
"Let me come in for a moment. I have something to show you."

"Wait!" she called back desperately. "Wait!"

Yet it was as if iron chains were loaded upon her. She could speak, but
she could not move. Were they reptiles she was watching so intently? Or
stay! Were they crabs? They were certainly rather like the funny little
crabs that she and Cinders used to hunt for in the shallow pools of
Valpre. She gave a little laugh. Surely it was the sort of thing that
might have happened to Alice in Wonderland!

And then quite suddenly her brain flashed back to understanding, to
vivid, appalling consciousness; and she knew that her husband was waiting
to enter, while she held in her hand the one thing which she would have
sacrificed her life sooner than let him see. The awfulness of the
realization spurred her back to action. Her limbs were free again,
though horribly--so horribly--unsteady. The letter seemed to burn her
fingers. She dropped it into the small drawer in which she kept her
trinkets, turned the key with feverish haste, and, withdrawing it, thrust
it down inside her dress. The cold steel sent a shiver to her very heart,
but it stilled the wild fever of her fear. When she turned from the
dressing-table she had nerved herself; she was calm.

She crossed the room to the door at which Trevor stood waiting, and
quietly opened it.

"How impatient you are!" she said, with a smile.

For a woman who held her fate at bay it was admirably done; but for
Chris--little Chris of the sunny eyes and eager, impetuous actions--it
was so overwhelming a failure that Mordaunt, standing on the threshold,
made no movement to enter, but stood, and looked and looked, as though
he had never seen her before.

She met the look as a duellist meets his opponent's blade, instantly but
warily, summoning all the craft of her newly awakened womanhood to her
aid. She was not conscious of agitation. Her heart felt as if it were
turned to stone; it did not seem to be beating at all.