"Well, good night!" she added;
and she turned into the house.
I accompanied her into the wide, dusky, stone-paved passage
which on the ground floor corresponded with our grand sala.
It opened at one end into the garden, at the other upon the canal,
and was lighted now only by the small lamp that was always
left for me to take up as I went to bed. An extinguished
candle which Miss Tita apparently had brought down with her
stood on the same table with it. "Good night, good night!"
I replied, keeping beside her as she went to get her light.
"Surely you would know, shouldn't you, if she had one?"
"If she had what?" the poor lady asked, looking at me queerly
over the flame of her candle.
"A portrait of the god. I don't know what I wouldn't give to see it."
"I don't know what she has got. She keeps her things locked up."
And Miss Tita went away, toward the staircase, with the sense
evidently that she had said too much.
I let her go--I wished not to frighten her--and I contented
myself with remarking that Miss Bordereau would not have locked
up such a glorious possession as that--a thing a person would
be proud of and hang up in a prominent place on the parlor wall.
Therefore of course she had not any portrait.
Miss Tita made no direct answer to this and, candle in hand,
with her back to me, ascended two or three stairs.
Then she stopped short and turned round, looking at me across
the dusky space.
"Do you write--do you write?" There was a shake in her voice--
she could scarcely bring out what she wanted to ask.
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