Page:Arthur Stringer - The Hand of Peril.djvu/136



rose-clad woman in front of the dressing-table did not scream out. She did not even swing about in her fragile-looking chair of cream and gold. She sat, leaning a little forward, staring past her own image in the mirror.

Her face had lost the last of its colour. Her arms, Kestner could now see, were stippled with a faint mottling of colour. The droop of the torso was eloquent of suddenly diverted attention. It was plain that she had caught sight of the head about the screen-top. Then her prepossession seemed to return to her, for the suddenly rose from her chair and faced the other side of the room.

It was at the same moment that Morello, nettled by the discovery of his spying attitude, stepped into the open. The two strangely divergent figures stood confronting each other for several seconds of unbroken silence. Then the woman spoke.

"What are you doing here?" she demanded, her voice clear and reed-like but a little tense with its angry challenge.

"I came back!" Morello spoke quietly, almost humbly.

"Why?"

"I came back," he repeated, "for you!"

He held out his two hands as he spoke, with a gesture