ide was
stripped of furniture. There was no need to knock. The woman walked in
and looked through the door of the "parlor" into the kitchen where a
child had once cooked dinners for her dolls. It also was empty.

"Gone!" The word dropped from her lips. She did not know that she had
spoken until a whispering echo of emptiness answered. Suddenly she
realized that she was very tired, more tired than she had ever been in
her life before. She seemed to have come to the end of the world, and
to have found nothing there but a stone wall.

"Oh!" she said, and covered her face with her hands, shivering, though
the sun outside the deserted house was warm. When her hands fell, there
were no tears in her eyes, but they were like blind eyes yearning for
sight.

It seemed to her that the house was trying to tell the secret of what
had happened. Stripped as it was, she had the impression that it was
full of intelligence and kindness. She listened at the foot of the
stairs. Perhaps the owner of the house had not really gone yet. Perhaps
he was up there. Perhaps for some reason he had to leave this place,
but was waiting for Some One he expected. Surely that must be so!
Surely he would not go away, just at this time?

When she had listened, and heard nothing, she called his name, softly
at first, then more loudly. But there was no answer. If he were in the
room above, he must have heard. Oh, the poor little room with the
balcony, where a child had looked out over the garden, and played that
fairies lived in the olive trees!

The girl was slightly made and light of foot, but she went up the steep
steps heavily, like a weary woman who feels herself old, very old. The
door of the balconied bedroom was shut. Maybe, after all, he might not
have heard her call! She knocked, once, twice, then turned the knob and
timidly pushed open the door. She could see nothing inside the room but
a packing-case, with a wooden cover propped against it, and a box of
bright new nails beside it on the bare, tiled floor.

The intruder stepped over the threshold, and saw that, at the further
end of the room out of sight from the door, stood a small leather
portmanteau--pathetically small, somehow--and a still smaller suitcase.
He had not gone, then!--and she had no right to be here, in his room.
She turned hastily to go out, and facing the door--blown partly shut by
the breeze from an open window, she also faced a portrait framed in a
wonderful frame of ru