been in the house for many years. Now she was past fifty and as she stood before John Webster he looked at her as he hadn't for a long time. A multitude of thoughts came quickly, like a handful of shot thrown against a window pane.
The woman standing before him was tall and lean and her face was marked by deep lines. It was an odd thing, the notions men had got into their heads about the beauty of women. Perhaps Natalie Swartz, when she was fifty, would look much like this woman.
Her name was Katherine and her coming to work for the Websters long ago had brought on a quarrel between John Webster and his wife. A young man of Indianapolis, who worked in a bank, had stolen a large sum of money and had run away with a woman who was a servant in his father's house. He had been killed in the wreck as he sat with the woman and all trace of him had been lost until someone from Indianapolis, quite by chance, saw and recognized Katherine on the streets of her adopted town. The question asked was, what had become of the stolen money, and Katherine had been accused of knowing and of concealing it.
Mrs Webster had wanted to discharge her at once and there had been a quarrel in which the husband had in the end come out victorious. For some reason the whole strength of his being had been put into the matter and one night as he stood in the common bedroom with his wife he had made a pronouncement so strong that he himself was surprised by the words that came from his lips. "If this woman goes out of this house without going voluntarily then I go also," he had said.
Now John Webster stood in the hallway of his house looking at the woman who had been the cause of the quarrel long ago. Well, he had seen her going silently about the house almost every day during the long years since that thing happened, but he had not looked at her as he did now. When she grew older Natalie Swartz might look as this woman now looked. If he were to be a fool and run away with Natalie, as that young fellow from Indianapolis had once run away with this woman, and if it tell out there was no railroad wreck he might some day be living with a woman who looked somewhat as Katherine now looked.
The thought did not alarm him. It was on the whole rather a sweet thought. "She has lived and sinned and suffered," he thought. There was about the woman's person a kind of strong quiet dignity and it was reflected in her physical being. There was no doubt a
