But all the while their eyes were bent upon the bedroom door; and Theron made out, after he had grown accustomed to the gloom and the smell, that many of them were telling their beads even while they kept the muttered conversation alive.

None of them paid any attention to him, or seemed to regard his presence there as unusual.
Presently he saw enter through the sunlit street doorway a person of a different class.

The bright light shone for a passing instant upon a fashionable, flowered hat, and upon some remarkably brilliant shade of red hair beneath it.

In another moment there had edged along through the throng, to almost within touch of him, a tall young woman, the owner of this hat and wonderful hair.

She was clad in light and pleasing spring attire, and carried a parasol with a long oxidized silver handle of a quaint pattern.