It was the same door with the great, sliding panel he
had locked on that fateful night, years ago, when he had fought with
her father and brother. In it, for a moment, her slim figure was
profiled in a frame of vivid light. Her mother must have been
beautiful. That was the thought that flashed upon him as the room and
its tragic memory lay before him. Everything came back to him vividly,
and he was astonished at the few changes in it. There was the big chair
with its leather arms, in which the overfatted creature who had been
her father was sitting when he came in. It was the same table, too, and
it seemed to him that the same odds and ends were on the mantel over
the cobblestone fireplace. And there was somebody's picture of the
Madonna still hanging between two windows. The Madonna, like the master
of the house, had been too fat to be beautiful. The son, an ogreish
pattern of his father, had stood with his back to the Madonna, whose
overfat arms had seemed to rest on his shoulders. He remembered that.
The girl was watching him closely when he turned toward her. He had
frankly looked the room over, without concealing his intention. She was
breathing a little unsteadily, and her hair was shimmering gloriously
in the light of an overhead chandelier.
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