It was an adventure!
Then she was gripped by the feeling that had come to her on the roof.
The whole thing was bizarre, ridiculous! She stopped, and drew the
letter from her glove. It might be ridiculous, but it was due from
her; and closing her lips very tight, she walked on. In thought she was
already standing close to him, her eyes shut, waiting, with her heart
beating wildly, to know what she would feel when his lips had spoken,
perhaps touched her face or hand. And she had a sort of mirage vision
of herself, with eyelashes resting on her cheeks, lips a little parted,
arms helpless at her sides. Yet, incomprehensibly, his figure was
invisible. She discovered then that she was standing before his door.
She rang the bell calmly, but instead of dropping her hand, pressed the
little bare patch of palm left open by the glove to her face, to see
whether it was indeed her own cheek flaming so.
The door had been opened by some unseen agency, disclosing a passage and
flight of stairs covered by a red carpet, at the foot of which lay an
old, tangled, brown-white dog full of fleas and sorrow. Unreasoning
terror seized on Barbara; her body remained rigid, but her spirit began
flying back across the Green Park, to the very hall of Valleys House.
Then she saw coming towards her a youngish woman in a blue apron, with
mild, reddened eyes.
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