"She is praying for me," Saidee thought; and dared not close the door
tightly, lest Victoria should hear. By and by it could be done, when the
light was out, and the girl dropped asleep.
Meanwhile, she tiptoed back to her bed, and sat on the edge of it, to
wait. At last the thread of light, fine as a red-gold hair, vanished
from the door; but as it disappeared a line of moonlight was drawn in
silver along the crack. Victoria must have left her windows wide open,
or there would not have been light enough to paint this gleaming streak.
Saidee sat on her bed for nearly half an hour, trying to concentrate her
thoughts on the present and future, yet unable to keep them from flying
back to the past, the long-ago past, which lately had seemed unreal, as
if she had dreamed it; the past when she and Victoria had been all the
world to each other.
There was no sound in the next room, and when Saidee was weary of her
strained position, she crossed the floor on tiptoe again, to shut the
door. But she could not resist a temptation to peep in.
It was as she had expected. Victoria had left the inlaid cedar-wood
shutters wide open, and through the lattice of old wrought-iron,
moonlight streamed. The room was bright with a silvery twilight, like a
mysterious dawn; but because the bed-linen and the embroidered silk
coverlet were white, the pale radiance focused round the girl, who lay
asleep in a halo of moonbeams.
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