indecision. Antonia had not heard
her enter. (She did not know that the old woman was standing in the
kitchen under the picture of the Virgin, with her hands across her eyes
like a bandage.) The lovely boudoir called to her, but she would not enter
it.

"I will go into the guest-chamber," she said; "that is the room set apart
for strangers. I think I must always have been a stranger here."

She opened the door quietly.

A pungent odor of smoke filled her nostrils. She groped for the light and
turned it on.

Through little horizontal wisps of smoke she saw Harboro lying across the
bed, his great chest standing high, his muscular throat exposed to the
light, a glint of teeth showing under the sweeping black mustache. His
eyes, nearly closed, seemed to harbor an eager light--as if he had
travelled along a dark path and saw at last a beacon on a distant hilltop.
A pistol was still clasped in his dead hand.

The unopened phial Sylvia carried slipped to the floor. She clutched at
her lips with both hands, to suppress the scream that arose within her.

He had no right to lie so, in this room. That was her thought. He had
taken the place she had chosen for her own.

And then she thought of Harboro as a stranger, too. Had she ever known
him, really?

Her first thought recurred. It should have been her right to lie here in
the guest-chamber, not Harboro's.

And yet, and yet....

The End

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