Some larger
animals were slung up under the beams of the loft to get them out of
the way; there was a bear in one corner, and a great crocodile, and a
shark; possessions of the previous owner of the Stuffed Animal House,
stored here by her executor, pending the final settlement of the
estate.
Lloyd Pryor stood at the doorway looking in. Through a grimed and
cobwebbed window at the farther end of the room the light filtered
down among the still figures; there was the smell of dead fur and
feathers, and of some acrid preservative. One box had been broken in
moving it from the house, and a beaver had slipped from his carefully
bitten branch, and lay on the dusty boards, a burst of cotton pushing
through the splitting belly-seam. Lloyd Pryor thrust it into its case
with his stick, and started as he did so. Something moved, back in the
dusk.
"It's I, Lloyd," Helena Richie said.
"You? My dear Nelly! Why are you sitting in this gloomy place?"
She smiled faintly, but her face was weary with tears. "Oh, I just--
came in here," she said vaguely.
She had said to herself when, angry and wounded, she left him in the
garden, that if she went back to the house he would find her. So she
had come here to the dust and silence of the carriage-house, and
sitting down on one of the cases had hidden her face in her hands.
Little by little anger ebbed. Just misery remained.
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