in obedience to a gesture from Gershom as he pushed the door
wider, she crossed the threshold, and went rapidly toward a couch in
front of the window. As she went forward there floated to her a heavy,
sweetish scent which seemed to her to be the very breath of despair. Her
first thought was that the sun had gone under a cloud; the next instant
she perceived that the window was shaded by a ragged ailantus tree and
that beyond the tree there was a high brick wall which shut out the
daylight. Then she looked at the woman lying under a ragged blanket on
the couch; and she felt vaguely that the haggard features framed in
coarse black hair awakened a troubled sense of familiarity or
recognition. The next instant there returned to her the memory of her
walk in the Square with Corinna a few weeks before, and of the strange
woman who had looked at them so curiously.

"I have come to see you," she began gently, "Mr. Gershom brought me."

Raising her head, the woman stared at her without replying. Her eyes
were dull and heavy, with drooping lids beneath which a sombre glow
flickered and died down. There was a wan yellow tinge over her face; and
yet now that the approach of death had refined and purified her
features, she was not without a gravity of expression which made her
strangely impressive, like some wax mask of an avenging Fate. With a
sensation of relief, Patty's eyes wandered from the haggard face to a
calla lily in a pot on the window-sill, and she noticed that it bore a
single perfect blossom. While she waited, overcome by a dumbness which
seemed to invade her from head to foot, her eyes clung to that calla
lily as if it were her one connection with reality. All the rest, the
close, dingy room, with the ailantus tree and the high wall beyond, the
sickening sweetish odour with which she was unfamiliar, the waxen mask
and the blank, drooping eyes of the woman; all these things seemed to
exist not in her actual surroundings, but in some hideous dream from
which she was struggling to awake. Somewhere long ago, in a dreadful
nightmare, she had smelled that cloying scent and seen those half-shut
eyes looking back at her. Somewhere--and yet it was impossible. She
could only have imagined it all.

Suddenly the woman spoke in a thick voice. "You are the Governor's
daughter? Gideon Vetch's daughter?"

"Yes. Mr. Gershom told me you wanted to see me."

"Mr. Gershom?" The woman's eyelids flickered and then fell heavily over
he