He knew not how long it was before the dumb moaning seemed to grow
fainter; to be less fearfully close to him; to change into what
sounded, at one moment, like a shivering of her whole body; at another,
like a rustling of her garments; at a third, like a slow scraping of
her hands over the table on the other side of her, and of her feet over
the floor. She had summoned courage enough at last to move, and to
grope her way out--he knew it as he listened. He heard her touch the
edge of the half-opened door; he heard the still sound of her first
footfall on the stone passage outside; then the noise of her hand drawn
along the wall; then the lessening gasps of her affrighted breathing as
she gained the stairs.
When she was gone, and the change and comfort of silence and solitude
stole over him, his power of thinking, his cunning and resolution began
to return. Listening yet a little while, and hearing no sound of any
disturbance among the sleepers in the house, he ventured to light one
of his matches; and, by the brief flicker that it afforded, picked his
way noiselessly through the lumber in the studio, and gained the garden
door. In a minute he was out again in the open air. In a minute more,
he had got over the garden wall, and was walking freely along the
lonely road of the new suburb, with the Hair Bracelet safe in his
pocket.
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