There she sat for an hour, listening to the silence. Her mind busied itself with trivial memories. She thought of Amelia Plecks.... It would have comforted her to hear that knock and the rattle of her dinner tray. The little sitting-room at Hudson's Hotel, with its bit of tapestry and its yellow tea-set and its vases filled with flowers, seemed to her memory as elaborate and artificial as the boudoir of a French princess. Farther than Millings had seemed from her old life did this dark little gabled attic seem from Millings. What was to be the end of this strange wandering, this withdrawing of herself farther and farther into the lonely places! She longed for the noise of Babe's hearty, irrepressible voice with its smack of chewing, of her step coming up the stairs to that little bedroom under Hudson's gaudy roof. Could it be possible that she was homesick for Millings? For the bar with its lights and its visitors and its big-aproned guardian? Her lids were actually smarting with tears at the recollection of Carthy's big Irish face.... He had been such a good, faithful watch-dog. Were men always like that--either watch-dogs or wolves? The simile brought her back to Hidden Creek. It grew darker and darker, a heavy darkness; the night had a new soft weight. There began to be a sort of whisper in the stillness--not the motion of pines, for there was no wind. Perhaps it was more a sensation than a sound, of innumerable soft numb fingers working against the silence ... Sheila got up, shivering, lighted her candle, and went over to the small, four-paned window under the eaves. She pressed her face against it and started back. Things were flying toward her. She opened the sash and a whirling scarf of stars flung itself into the room. It was snowing. The night was blind with snow. CHAPTER IX WORK AND A SONG On the studio skylight the misty autumn rain fell that night, as the snow fell against Sheila's window-panes, with a light tapping. Below it Dickie worked. He had very little leisure now for stars or dreams. For the first time in his neglected and mismanaged life he knew the pleasure of congenial work; and this, although Lorrimer worked him like a slave. He dragged him over the city and set his picture-painting faculty to labor in dark corners. Dickie, every sense keen and clean, was not allowed to flinch. No, his freshness was his value. And the power that was in him, driven with whip and spur, throve and grew and fairly took the bit in its teeth and ran away with its trainer.