“Do your friends—the people you had your row with tonight—know where you live?” I asked.
I knew they did. I wanted to see what she knew.
She dropped the dog as if she had forgotten it, and her brows puckered.
“I do not know that,” she said slowly. “Yet it may be. If they do—”
She shuddered, spun on her heel, and pushed the hall door violently shut.
“They may have been here this afternoon,” she went on. “Frana has made himself prisoner in closets before, but I fear everything. I am coward-like. But there is none here now?”
“No one,” I assured her again.
We went into the sitting-room. I got my first good look at her when she shed her hat and dark cape.
She was a trifle under medium height, a dark-skinned woman of thirty in a vivid orange gown. She was dark as an Indian, with bare brown shoulders round and sloping, tiny feet and hands, her fingers heavy with rings. Her nose was thin and curved, her mouth full-lipped and red, her eyes—long and thickly lashed—were of an extraordinary narrowness. They were dark eyes, but nothing of their color could be seen through the thin slits that separated the lids. Two dark gleams through veiling lashes. Her black hair was disarranged just now in fluffy silk puffs. A rope of pearls hung down on her dark chest. Earrings of black iron—in a peculiar club-like design—swung beside her cheeks.
Altogether, she was an odd trick. But I wouldn’t want to be quoted as saying that she wasn’t beautiful—in a wild way.