her forcing herself
to look at it.

Remove herself as she chose, Alicia could not avoid passing Lindsay's
room, for her own lay beyond it. In the seven o'clock half light of a
February evening, in the middle of the week, she went along the matted
upper hall on tiptoe, and stumbled over a veiled form squatted in the
native way, near his door, profoundly asleep. "Ayah!" she exclaimed, but
the face that looked confusedly up at her was white, whiter than
common, Captain Filbert's face. Alicia drew her hand away and made an
imperceptible movement in the direction of her skirts. She stood silent,
stricken in the dusk with astonishment, but the sense that was strongest
in her was plainly that of having made a criminal discovery. Laura
stumbled upon her feet, and the two faced each other for an instant,
words held from them equally by the authority of the sickroom door.
Then Alicia beckoned as imperiously as if the other had in fact been
the servant she took her for, and Laura followed to where, farther on, a
bedroom door stood open, which presently closed upon them both. It was
a spacious room, with pale high-hung draperies, a scent of flowers, such
things as an etching of Greuze, an ivory and ebony crucifix over the
bed. Captain Filbert remembered the crucifix afterward with a feeling
almost intense, also some silver-backed brushes on the toilet-table.
Across the open window a couple of bars of sunset glowed red and gold,
and a tall palm of the garden cut all its fronds sharply against the
light.

"Well?" said Alicia, when the door was shut.

Captain Filbert put out a deprecating hand.

"I intended to ask if you had any objection, miss, but you had gone out.
And the nurse was in the room; I couldn't get to her. There was nobody
but the servants about."

"Objection to what?"

"To my being there. I came to pray for Mr. Lindsay."

"Did you make any noise?"

Miss Filbert looked professionally touched. "It was silent prayer, of
course," she said.

Alicia, standing with one hand upon the toilet-table, had an air of
eagerness, of successful capture. The yellow sky in the window behind
her made filmy lights round her hair, and outlined her tall figure, in
the gracefulness of which there was a curious crisped effect, like a
conventional pose taken easily, from habit. Laura Filbert thought she
looked like a princess.

"I seem to hear of nothing but petitions," she said. "Isn't somebody
praying for you?"

The blood of an