I had a
greed of light for her, as a protection and because darkness had held
her so long.

"It seems as if we should do something!" Phillida yielded unwillingly.

Vere's eyes met mine as he turned from drawing the last curtain. We were
both thinking of the force that had driven the frail old willow tree
through tile and cement of the new building to flatten the metal of
motor and car into uselessness. The mere weight of the tree would not
have carried it through the roof. To "do something" by way of physical
escape from that----

The ribbon had glided from Desire's hair, almost as if the vital,
resilient mass resentfully freed itself from restraint by the bit of
satin. Now she put up her hands with a slow movement and drew two broad
strands of the glittering tresses across her shoulders, veiling her
face.

"Wait," she answered Phillida, most unexpectedly. "I must be sure--quite
sure! I must think. If you will--wait."

CHAPTER XIX

"Oh, little booke--how darst thou put thyself in press for
drede?"--CHAUCER.

We sat quietly waiting. I had drawn a chair near Desire. Phillida and
Vere were together, chairs touching, her right hand curled into his
left. Bagheera the cat had slipped into the room before the door was
closed, and lay pressed against his mistress's stout little boot. Our
small garrison was assembled, surely for as strange a defense as ever
sober moderns undertook. For my part, it was wonder enough to study that
captive who was at once so strange yet so intimately well known to me.

The Tiffany clock on the mantel shelf chimed midnight. Soon after, we
began to experience the first break in the heavy monotony of heat and
fog that had overlaid the place for three days. The temperature began to
fall. The fog did not lift. The flowered cretonne curtains hung straight
from their rods unstirred by any movement of air. But the atmosphere in
the room steadily grew colder. I saw Phillida shiver in the chill
dampness and pull closer the collar of her thin blouse. When Desire
finally spoke, we three started as if her low tones had been the clang
of a hammer.

"I have tried to judge what is best," she said, not raising her face
from its shadowing veil of hair. "I am not very wise. But it seems
better that there should be no ignorance between us. If I had been
either wise or good, I should never have come down from the convent to
draw another into danger and horror without purpose or hope of an