ay with me, and there she sat,
cross-legged on the clean floor, a red silk scarf twined around her
shoulders and--of all things--a red and blue kerchief twisted into a
turban on her head. She was rocking back and forth and singing, and I
give you my word, I was as shocked as if I'd seen my own mother in that
rig, swaying there!

"She turned her head as I came in and I saw that she had big blue glass
earrings in her ears.

"And all of a sudden it came to me--what was happening there: I felt
very queer for a moment, I tell you! Everything seemed to be rolling
backward, like one of those cinematograph things, reversed. Not I--I
swear nothing touched me. I was the same. _So was the jeweller. So
was the parson. So was the man before that..._

"'Althea,' I said roughly, 'what are you doing there? Take those rags
off you! Get up immediately! I am ashamed of you.'

"Her eyes met mine for a moment, glittering like a savage's--it was nip
and tuck between us there: she might have thrown a plate at me. But
she didn't; I won. You see, she was not a young woman, and unusually
controlled for one of her race, and she owed me a good deal, besides.

"'I'm thoroughly ashamed of you,' I repeated.

"She staggered up and burst into hoarse, frightened sobbing.

"''Fore God, I am, too, doctor!' she cried and stumbled into her
pantry, shaking and muttering. I waited till she came back, and she
was quiet and trim again--herself. She stuffed a bundle into the stove
before my eyes, and I don't think she ever met my look again. She was
a good woman, Althea was.

"But the other--Mynie--well, the game was up with her. Heavens, the
change in that girl's eyes! It wasn't that they were bold, it wasn't
that they were beautiful, nor even that they were conscious of it. No,
it was more than that--more and worse and deeper and older-- Oh, as
old as Hell! That look unsettled ... disorganized ... how shall I put
it? The flimsiness of civilisation, the essential bedrock of
animalism--the big, ceaseless undertow of things ... anyway, it was all
in that girl's eyes and it touched that spring in poor George that
Nature has coiled in every one of us. The Old Lady wound us up with
that spring and she daren't let it run down, you see."

The room was absolutely empty but for the four of them; they stared at
him steadily, his rumbling, husky voice held them like a vise; they
could not miss a word.

"She got fat on it. She bloomed in