Page:Pratt portraits - sketched in a New England suburb (IA prattportraitssk00full).pdf/61

 her once before. "I guess it's that red rose," she said to herself, with a dreary feeling at her heart.

Harriet's devotions that evening were serious and absorbing. Long after the house was quiet she still knelt beside her bed, her head resting in her hands. Yet meek as was the attitude, her face, when she lifted it, was harder than before; the set look seemed fixed there. She put out her light and got into bed, but she could not compose herself to sleep. Hour after hour she lay with her eyes wide open, staring into the darkness. She had ceased to think; she had ceased to resolve. She was trying, with a dull, persistent effort, not to see that red rose and the pale face above it, so like her own. The tall clock in the dining-room struck eleven and twelve. Then the minutes dragged so slowly that she hoped she had been asleep. But no; the next stroke that echoed through the empty halls was one. At two o'clock something seemed to give way within her. She got up and struck a light, and having put on her heavy flannel double-gown and slippers, she stood for a moment irresolute. She glanced furtively at the old mahogany bureau between the front windows, and then, candle in hand, she passed out into the warm hall and down the stairs. As the old timbers creaked beneath her feet she paused, and cast a guilty look over her shoulder. "If this isn't perfectly ridiculous!" she said to herself, with strong disapproval. But she pursued her way still more cautiously.