She did not try to open the door; she was sure it was locked, and she
was too proud. She sat down on the flat, cool door-stone, and
remained there as dusky and motionless against the old gray panel of
the door as the shadow of some inanimate object that had never moved.

The wind began to rise, and at the same time the full moon, impelled
softly upward by force as unseen as thought. Charlotte's fair head
gleamed out abruptly in the moonlight like a pale flower, but the
folds of her mottled purple skirt were as vaguely dark as the foliage
on the lilac-bush beside her. All at once the flowering branches on a
wide-spreading apple-tree cut the gloom like great silvery wings of a
brooding bird. The grass in the yard was like a shaggy silver fleece.
Charlotte paid no more attention to it all than to her own breath, or
a clock tick which she would have to withdraw from herself to hear.

A low voice, which was scarcely more than a whisper, called her, a
slender figure twisted itself around the front corner of the house
like a vine. "Charlotte, you there?" Charlotte did not hear. Then the
whisper came again. "Charlotte!"

Charlotte looked around then.

A slender white hand reached out in the gloom around the corner and
beckoned. "Charlotte, come; come quick."

Charlotte did not stir.

"Charlotte, do come. Your mother's dreadful afraid you'll catch cold.
The front door is open."