There were lights in an upstairs window and
a shadow kept crossing and recrossing the blind. It was a nice shadow
and wore a head-dress like her own except that it was more sticky out.
The hall, too, showed a light, and, looking up the street, she saw a
maidservant, running very fast, disappear round the corner. After that
there was silence for a long time. In the street no one moved; it was
deserted, empty as the little Madonna's arms, and dark. A fine rain was
falling, and there were no stars. The sound of distant traffic had died
away. The last underground train had drilled its way through sulphurous
tunnels to the sheds where engines sleep.
She could not tell what kept her waiting at the window; perhaps it was
the moving shadow on the blind, perhaps a prescience, a sense of
happenings near at hand, wonderful yet frightening. A thousand other
times she had looked across the street in the dead of night, only to
shake her head and steal back sorrowfully to her canvas. But to-night
it was different; there was a feeling of promise, as though the
question that she ever asked with her eyes might at last be given an
answer.
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