THE SECOND LATCHKEY




CHAPTER I

A WHITE ROSE


Even when Annesley Grayle turned out of the Strand toward the Savoy she
was uncertain whether she would have courage to walk into the hotel. With
each step the thing, the dreadful thing, that she had come to do, loomed
blacker. It was monstrous, impossible, like opening the door of the
lions' cage at the Zoo and stepping inside.

There was time still to change her mind. She had only to turn
now ... jump into an omnibus ... jump out again at the familiar corner,
and everything would be as it had been. Life for the next five, ten,
maybe twenty years, would be what the last five had been.

At the thought of the Savoy and the adventure waiting there, the girl's
skin had tingled and grown hot, as if a wind laden with grains of heated
sand had blown over her. But at the thought of turning back, of going
"home"--oh, misused word!--a leaden coldness shut her spirit into a tomb.

She had walked fast, after descending at Bedford Street from a fierce
motor-bus with a party of comfortable people, bound for the Adelphi
Theatre. Never before had she been in a motor-omnibus, and she was not