He listened again;
everything was still. He was conscious of feeling ill at ease and a
trifle nervous. What a long time Harlowe took to make his preparations.
He would look out in the hall. To do this it was necessary to turn up
the gas. He did so, and in his confusion turned it out!
Where were the matches? He remembered that there was a bronze something
on the table that, in the irony of modern decorative taste, might hold
ashes or matches, or anything of an unpicturesque character. He knocked
something over, evidently the ink,--something else,--this time a
champagne glass. Becoming reckless, and now groping at random in the
ruins, he overturned the bronze Mercury on the center table, and then
sat down hopelessly in his chair. And then a pair of velvet fingers slid
into his, with the matches, and this audible, musical statement:
"It is a match you are seeking? Here is of them."
Thatcher flushed, embarrassed, nervous,--feeling the ridiculousness of
saying, "Thank you" to a dark somebody,--struck the match, beheld by its
brief, uncertain glimmer Carmen de Haro beside him, burned his fingers,
coughed, dropped the match, and was cast again into outer darkness.
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