Page:The unhallowed harvest (1917).djvu/61

56 back of the first closed door. For he was a gentleman, and had a gentleman's sense of the proprieties. But he was utterly powerless to hide the impression that the woman's beauty was making on him. Moreover it was a versatile beauty. In the brief space occupied by his visit he had seen its character diametrically change. From the strong, scornful, splendid type maintained during the greater part of his interview with her, it had been transformed into the tender, clinging, trusting variety that with many men is still more alluring. But, whatever its character, it held him irresistibly under its spell. He moved backward to the outer door, his gaze still fastened on the woman's face. She gave him her hand at parting. It was a warm, confident, lingering hand-clasp, attuned to the look in her eyes, to the modulation of her voice, to the general friendliness of her manner. It was not the art of coquetry. It was as much deeper and more subtle than that as the sea is deeper and more subtle than the shallow pool. A woman does not play the coquette while a sheet-covered thing that had been her husband lies ghastly still and gruesome in an adjoining room.

But when she heard the humming of the starting car, and knew that her recent visitor was well out of sight and hearing, she resumed her seat, locked her hands above her head, and permitted her fine lips to curve in a smile that was neither gentle nor tender, nor wholly void of guile.

The door from the kitchen was opened and a little old woman with a deeply wrinkled face thrust her head into the room.

"Has everybody gone, Mary?" she asked.

"Yes, mother."

"The first man that come was a preacher, wasn't he?"

"Yes, mother."

"Is he goin' to hold the funeral?"

"No."