But even as she stood with outstretched arms and glowing face, a change came over her features. The children saw it coming, and the awe in which they had listened, wide-eyed, to her description of this far-off, ancient land gave way to a kind of enchanting anticipation of what might happen next. The sorrowful lines about her mouth hardened until they became almost cruel; her long nose, with the bend in it so peculiarly unlike any that they had seen, widened at the nostrils with the great breaths which she was drawing; the sad yearning which had softened her eyes faded as a candle burns itself out in a dark room, and into the blackness of their depths there came an ominous red gleam. She was no longer a poet, a patriot, or a prophet. She was one who hates, bitterly, relentlessly. Now her voice rose like the rising wind on the bare plains of her own land. “I live there. I play--like him--like her--like you all. I chase birds and catch falling blossoms in my hair. Then I grow up. I go to a great city--to Erzerum.” To the listening children this strange word boomed like the sound of the town drum on Memorial Day. “I marry there--a good man. We have two children--a girl, a boy. My husband, he buy silks, laces, jewels, all beautiful from Persia, and sell them. We are happy. Then a year ago--when the blossoms fall--like this--the Turks come. They run through Erzerum--their horses run! They kill--they kill--they _kill_!” Her words ended in a high succession of convulsive liquid notes. Her hands, which she had clasped above her head as her story mounted into tragedy, twined and knotted themselves together. For a moment grief dulled the ominous red gleam in her eyes, and the children saw with consternation that they swam with tears. But the tears did not fall, much to Mary Wescott’s relief. The hard lines came back around her mouth. Again her nostrils quivered. “They kill my husband. They want to kill me and my children--but my husband--he hide us in a cave where he keep the silks and jewels. They do not find us. If they find us--_I_ kill--one--two--three! _I_ kill because they kill my husband!” The fascinated children stared, half frightened, now at their guest who dared to use a word so tremendous in its import, and who, moreover, they felt sure, was entirely capable of its actual embodiment, now at their parents, between whom they had caught in passing certain questioning glances. Their father and mother, it must be admitted, were experiencing not a few misgivings at this bloodthirsty turn in Mary Christmas’ recital; for although they had not made a scientific study of the child from the embryo to the beginning of adolescence, they understood quite as clearly as modern parents that there are several things of which children may just as well remain in ignorance.