“Lise!” she called.  But there was no answer from the darkness.  And Janet, trembling, her heart beating wildly, sprang from the bed, searched for the matches, and lit the gas.  There was no sign of Lise; her clothes, which she had the habit of flinging across the chairs, were nowhere to be seen.  Janet’s eyes fell on the bureau, marked the absence of several knick-knacks, including a comb and brush, and with a sudden sickness of apprehension she darted to the wardrobe and flung open the doors.  In the bottom were a few odd garments, above was the hat with the purple feather, now shabby and discarded, on the hooks a skirt and jacket Lise wore to work at the Bagatelle in bad weather.  That was all....  Janet sank down in the rocking-chair, her hands clasped together, overwhelmed by the sudden apprehension of the tragedy that had lurked, all unsuspected, in the darkness:  a tragedy, not of Lise alone, but in which she herself was somehow involved.  Just why this was so, she could not for the moment declare.  The room was cold, she was clad only in a nightdress, but surges of heat ran through her body.  What should she do?  She must think.  But thought was impossible.  She got up and closed the window and began to dress with feverish rapidity, pausing now and again to stand motionless.  In one such moment there entered her mind an incident that oddly had made little impression at the time of its occurrence because she, Janet, had been blinded by the prospect of her own happiness—­that happiness which, a few minutes ago, had seemed so real and vital a thing!  And it was the memory of this incident that suddenly threw a glaring, evil light on all of Lise’s conduct during the past months—­her accidental dropping of the vanity case and the gold coin!  Now she knew for a certainty what had happened to her sister.

Having dressed herself, she entered the kitchen, which was warm, filled with the smell of frying meat.  Streaks of grease smoke floated fantastically beneath the low ceiling, and Hannah, with the frying-pan in one hand and a fork in the other, was bending over the stove.  Wisps of her scant, whitening hair escaped from the ridiculous, tightly drawn knot at the back of her head; in the light of the flickering gas-jet she looked so old and worn that a sudden pity smote Janet and made her dumb —­pity for her mother, pity for herself, pity for Lise; pity that lent a staggering insight into life itself.  Hannah had once been young, desirable, perhaps, swayed by those forces which had swayed her.  Janet wondered why she had never guessed this before, and why she had guessed it now.  But it was Hannah who, looking up and catching sight of Janet’s face, was quick to divine the presage in it and gave voice to the foreboding that had weighed on her for many weeks.

“Where’s Lise?”

And Janet could not answer.  She shook her head.  Hannah dropped the fork, the handle of the frying pan and crossed the room swiftly, seizing Janet by the shoulders.