Page:Arthur Stringer - The Door of Dread.djvu/314

 worry her hands free, and then her feet. It did not take her long to discover that all such efforts were useless. It only tired her body and added to the pain in her shoulders. And after all her struggles there was no appreciable loosening of any of the strands that were so cruelly interfering with her circulation.

She lay back on the box-couch, once more studying the room about her. From time to time her eye returned to the dead palm in its ugly majolica vase. It towered above her in its corner, as melancholy as a hearse-plume. It stood a monument of neglect and abuse. It depressed her with its spiritlessness. Its pallid and withered fronds became something pathetic. It seemed so funereal in its etiolated dejection that she turned wearily away from it.

Then she stared back at the dead palm, for it had suddenly become of interest to her. She looked at it long and pointedly, with her forehead slightly wrinkled. Then she took a deeper breath. It was almost a breath of relief. For on the faded fronds of that dead palm, she saw, hung her one and only hope.

She wormed her way to the edge of the box-couch, letting herself drop limply to the floor. Then