though in prayer.

"In all the world there is no place like this--for me. It is my
place. My work is here. I could not--could not!"

With a slight indrawing breath that was half sigh, half shiver, she
left the window and drew her chair close to the fire. For a long
time she looked into its dancing depths, and gradually her eyes so
narrowed that their long lashes touched her flame-flushed cheeks.
After a while she got up, went over to her desk, took from it several
letters locked in a small drawer, came back to the fire, and again
looked into it.

The girlish grace of her figure in its simple dress of soft blue,
open at the neck and showing the curves of the beautiful throat, was
emphasized by the unconscious relaxation of her body as she leaned
for a moment against the mantel; and the Claudia to whom all looked
for direction, the Claudia who had small patience with hesitating
indecisions, and none for morbid self-questionings, searched the
leaping flames with eyes uncertain and afraid.

A slight noise in the hall made her start uneasily. She did not want
to be disturbed to-night. Turning her head, she listened. The
corners of the large, high-ceilinged room, with its old-fashioned
mahogany furniture, its shelves of books, its carved desk of quaint
pattern, and its many touches of feminine occupancy, were lost in
shadow, and only here and there on chair or table or bit of wall the
firelight darted, but to dance off again, and the stillness was
unbroken save by the crackling logs upon the hearth.