Page:The Star in the Window.pdf/269

Rh The realization that she would not be there laid its cold hold upon Reba's drowsy consciousness. She sat up abruptly. Her absence would be sure to be observed. Mamie would carry coffee and toast on a tray up to her room within half an hour, as she often did if she slept over. She would find the room empty! The bed undisturbed! At half-past nine, a short hour and a half from now, when prayers were held in the Alliance parlors, conducted this month by Miss Ellsworth, Mamie would, no doubt, report her absence to the General Secretary!

Reba had not thought of this last night when she had let that train speed away without her. She recalled now with what quiet earnestness and persistence Miss Ellsworth had set to work hunting for a girl a year ago, who failed to return to her room one night, never reporting afterward where they had found her, nor explaining why she never came back to the Alliance as a lodger again. They would begin to hunt for her, in the same grim determined way, Reba concluded. And one of the steps they would take, it flashed across her with sickening certainty, would be to communicate with Louise Bartholomew! And Louise had seen her last night!

As Reba pictured herself returning to the Alliance, awaited by anxious watchers, questioned by suspicious investigators, forced to explain her absence, and expose the pitiful story of her disillusionment, she recoiled. Her desire to conceal herself, hide her suffering, was as instinctive as with a hurt animal. Besides, might they not doubt her story? Might they not think about her the awful thing Mamie had thought about that other girl, who had not come back