Page:Wadsworth Camp--the gray mask.djvu/139

Rh most strength, from the desire to see her again; to watch her quiet figure—a little inscrutable, unconsciously provocative; to hover again on the edge of an avowal, alert for his favorable moment.

The door hinges responded to a pressure. The lamp had evidently been extinguished again, for he saw in the uncertain radiance of the embers a thing, scarcely definable as human, prone beyond the threshold.

The empty doorway, the inert object on the floor, the darkness, accented rather than diminished by the embers, blurred his calculations. Where was the one who had opened and for whom his knife was eager?

Unexpectedly a brilliant light flashed in his eyes and went out. Half-blinded, he sensed the presence of something on the sill, and he struck downward with all his force. He reached only emptiness. The one on the sill had sprung through. From somewhere in the house Garth heard the patter of hastening feet.

He fought away the effects of the flash, striving to locate the one who had entered. There beside the heap of rubbish knelt a form darker than the white darkness.

He moved noiselessly over. He reached down and grasped the bent shoulder, and, as the shoulder recoiled from his touch, so he recoiled from its quality that revealed the presence in his prison of a woman.

Through his amazement he heard the door close,