The form above him leaned forward over the railing.
"Mr. Makimmon," a woman's voice said, "if
you want Mr. Peterman, I'll call him. He's at the
back of the house."

Gordon was totally unaware of her identity.

"No," he replied, hesitatingly, "I wasn't after
him in particular--"

"You don't know me," she challenged, laughing;
"it's Meta Beggs; I teach the school, you know."

Instantly the memory returned to him of a woman's
round, gleaming shoulders slipping into a web
of soft white; he recalled the school-teacher's bitter
arraignment of her life, her prospects. "I didn't
know you," he admitted, "and that's the fact; it was
the dark." He hesitated once more, conscious of the
awkwardness of his position, talking upward to an
indistinguishable shape. "I heard you were back,"
he continued impotently.

"Yes," she assented, "there was nothing else open.
...Won't you come up and smoke a cigarette?
It's pleasant here on the gallery."

He mounted the steps, making his way over the
narrow, hollow-sounding passage to her side. She
was seated overlooking the rift of the valley. "I'll
get you a chair," she said, rising. At her side a
door opened into a dim room. "No, no," he protested,
"let me -- in here?"

He entered the room. It was, he divined, hers.

[[176]]

p175 _ -chap- _ toc-1 _ p176w _ toc-2 _ +chap+ _ p177

v?