Languid now, preoccupied, Lillian ascended the long flight of steps to the piazza and paused to look out at the great spread of the landscape, wreathed in flying mists and of a different aspect from this increase of elevation. She had begun to stroll aimlessly along in the possession of the seclusion she craved, when she suddenly noted the fact that the front door stood a trifle ajar. She paused with a repugnant sense of a lapse of caution. Then she reflected that bolts and locks could add but little security in a desert solitude like this, where a marauder might work his will from September to June with no witnesses but the clouds and winds to hinder. She had forgotten the insistent declaration of Gladys that she had seen a light flicker from these blank windows the preceding night. Indeed, even at the time she had accounted it but the hysteric adjunct of their panic in the illusion of a stealthy step on the veranda of the bungalow. She was animated only by the simplest impulse of idle curiosity when she laid her hand on the bolt. The big door swung open at once on well-oiled hinges, and she found herself in the spacious hotel office, on one side of which were the clerk's desk and the office clock, looking queerly disconsolate without the loitering groups of humanity wont to congregate about the counter. The day glared garishly through the great skylight on the dusty interior; the big windows held expansive sections of mountain landscape, bronze, blue, and scarlet, like vivid paintings in frames. A staircase of fine and stately proportions descended from the lofty reach of the upper story, dividing into two sweeping flights from the landing. A massive mantel-piece was on the opposite side, with an immense fireplace, and heavy brass andirons and fender. She was a stranger to the interior of the place, for her visit to the locality began after the closing of the hotel, but though she looked about with a vague sub-current of interest as she sauntered through the building, glad of any pretext to prolong her absence from the bungalow, her mind was really introverted. She felt that she could never forgive herself her part in the scene of the morning, that wild, impulsive cry that voiced at once confession and a plea for pardon. At the sheer recollection of his rejoinder she tingled and winced as from the touch of fire. "Don't mention it," quotha. And they neither had aught to regret--he was sure of that, forsooth! Regret! It was only another name for her life. There was nothing but regret, night and day, sleeping and waking. But oh, how could she have said the words! What was it to him? He cared naught for her now and her cruelties--an old, old story to him, to be sure, told to the end, the pages shut. And she must needs seem to seek to turn the leaf anew! What else indeed could he think? Surely she had been beguiled by Gladys' vicarious sentimentality as to the lure of his coming, even while she had flouted the possibility.