ain, and Mary was not in the doorway,
but the door was open and the light shone. It was as if she meant to
tell him that she would never shut him out; he could always see that
friendly light of the open doorway--as if it were open for him to come
back, if he would. He could see it until a wing of the New House came
between, when he went up the path. The open doorway seemed to him the
beautiful symbol of her friendship--of her thought of him; a symbol of
herself and of her ineffable kindness.

And she kept the door open--even to-night, though the sleet and fine
snow swept in upon her bare throat and arms, and her brown hair was
strewn with tiny white stars. His heart leaped as he turned and saw that
she was there, waving her hand to him, as if she did not know that the
storm touched her. When he had gone on, Mary did as she always did--she
went into an unlit room across the hall from that in which they had
spent the evening, and, looking from the window, watched him until he
was out of sight. The storm made that difficult to-night, but she
caught a glimpse of him under the street-lamp that stood between the two
houses, and saw that he turned to look back again. Then, and not before,
she looked at the upper windows of Roscoe's house across the street.
They were dark. Mary waited, but after a little while she closed the
front door and returned to her window. A moment later two of the upper
windows of Roscoe's house flashed into light and a hand lowered the
shade of one of them. Mary felt the cold then--it was the third night
she had seen those windows lighted and the shade lowered, just after
Bibbs had gone.

But Bibbs had no glance to spare for Roscoe's windows. He stopped for
his last look back at the open door, and, with a thin mantle of white
already upon his shoulders, made his way, gasping in the wind, to the
lee of the sheltering wing of the New House.

A stricken George, muttering hoarsely, admitted him, and Bibbs became
aware of a paroxysm within the house. Terrible sounds came from the
library: Sheridan cursing as never before; his wife sobbing, her voice
rising to an agonized squeal of protest upon each of a series of muffled
detonations--the outrageous thumping of a bandaged hand upon wood; then
Gurney, sharply imperious, "Keep your hand in that sling! Keep your hand
in that sling, I say!"

"LOOK!" George gasped, delighted to play herald for so important a
tragedy; and he renewed upon his face the ghastly e