Across the foot lay a bedgown and a pair of stockings.
Pierre looked long, at first curiously; but after a little his forehead
gathered and his lips drew in a little, as if he had a twinge of pain.
He got up, went over near the bed, and picked up a hairpin. Then he came
back to the chair and sat down, turning it about in his fingers, still
looking abstractedly at the floor.
"Poor Lucy!" he said presently; "the poor child! Ah, what a devil I was
then--so long ago!"
This solitary room--Lydia's--had brought back the time he went to the
room of his own wife, dead by her own hand after an attempt to readjust
the broken pieces of life, and sat and looked at the place which had been
hers, remembering how he had left her with her wet face turned to the
wall, and never saw her again till she was set free for ever. Since
that time he had never sat in a room sacred to a woman alone.
"What a fool, what a fool, to think!" he said at last, standing up; "but
this girl must be saved. She must have her home here again."
Unconsciously he put the hairpin in his pocket, walked over to the
dressing-table and picked up the hair-brush. On its back was the legend,
"L. T. from C. H." He gave a whistle.
"So-so?" he said, "'C. H.' M'sieu' le capitaine, is it like that?"
A year before, Lydia had given Captain Halby a dollar to buy her a hair-
brush at Winnipeg, and he had brought her one worth ten dollars.
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