felt calm again and rather foolish as she explained that she had felt alarmed for no special reason--had thought about the pearls. Mrs. Conway glanced at the closed safe.
"I thought," she said, "that the argument for keeping valuables in the safe was that we could sleep calmly. The safe can't be opened unless you give the combination."
"It was childish of me," said Pearl. "I was frightened."
Mrs. Conway smiled at her more kindly than she had ever done. It was one of the contradictions in her nature that she was physically brave--a fact obscured to most observers on account of her moral cowardice. Like most brave people, she was kind to the timid.
"It's the storm," she said. "It gets on some people's nerves. I hope the roof isn't leaking; it nearly always does in one of these storms. What were you afraid of?"
"I don't exactly know," said Pearl.
"Would you like me to go back to your room with you? Would you like to sleep on my sofa?" Edna asked.
But that was too ignominious. A faint wild dawn was breaking, and Pearl knew that with the night her terror had gone. She went back to bed.
The next morning the wind was still blowing like a hurricane