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She did not at once raise her head, although she pushed me gently away from her at the sound of the opening door. But I, who was standing facing that direction, saw him from the first, a dark stern figure, standing as though rooted to the ground, with the doorhandle still in his hand. For the second time in one day he seemed to have intervened at the precise psychological moment.
As I descended the steps the sound of the running water faded out, with a suddenness which caught my ear, though failing to fix my attention. But as I made to grasp the great rusty iron doorhandle, which was curiously wrought of two dragons intertwisted neck and tail, again my every sense sprang on the alert, and a chill of terror crept tingling through my frame.
She was still standing where Maurice had left her, close beside the door; but her face was flaming, and her right hand fumbled with the doorhandle. "Ephie!" said Maurice warningly. He was afraid she would turn the handle, and, going over to her, took her by the arm. "Say, Maurice, I'm going home," she said under her breath. "I can't stop here. Oh, why did you bring me?"
"Nothing was further from my thoughts." Maurice hesitated, and stood undecided, holding the doorhandle. Then, following an impulse, he turned and sat down again. "Madeleine, tell me I wouldn't ask anyone but you what sort of a fellow IS this Schilsky?" "What sort of a fellow?" She laughed sarcastically. "To be quite truthful, Maurice, the best fiddler the Con. has turned out for years."
The doorhandle turned, and Richard stepped in front of Roger. But when Marion slowly came into the room she did not see him or anyone else, because she was looking down on a piece of broken china which she held in her hand. There was stillness till Richard whispered: "Mother."
"Of course that's all nonsense. What more likely for you to think, when you knew it was her throat that ailed her?" Seeing that in her enthusiasm for a materialist conception of the universe she loosed her grip of the doorhandle, he pushed past her, and took her candlestick away from her and set it down with his flowers and papers on the staircase.
With one hand he jerked Roger back into the room by his coat-collar, with the other he slammed the French window. "Be quiet. I tell you she's all right. I know where she's gone." "Where, then?" "Never mind." "Where? Where?" His hands fumbled for the doorhandle again. "Oh, stop that!"
She rolled over and covered her head with the quilt and wept and wept, until she fell asleep. It was the slow turning of the doorhandle that woke her. Instantly she remembered the huge extent to which life had gone wrong during the past few hours, and rolled back to face the window, which was now admitting a light grown grave with the lateness of the afternoon.
Not knowing what else to do, I took them from her and she promptly, after smoothing her gloves, walked toward the passenger's side of the car. "You want me to take you somewhere, miss?" I inquired quite superfluously. She bent her head the merest fraction and then rested her fingers on the doorhandle, waiting for me to open it for her.
Josephine was just going to say what at other times she wouldn't have owned to for the world what she kept for her very last weapon, "But you're the tallest," when they noticed that the kitchen door was open, and there stood Kate... "Very stiff," said Josephine, grasping the doorhandle and doing her best to turn it. As if anything ever deceived Kate! It couldn't be helped.
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