Read "The Gilded Chair" by Melville Davisson Post online for free on Textopian. Full text with search, annotations, highlights, and AI-powered reading aids.
The Duke of Dorset hurried through the deserted corridor and ascended the great stair.
From the moon, sheets of light, entering through the long windows, lay here and there, white, across the steps, and red across that bronze frieze wherein satyrs danced. Although the man hurried, habit for an instant stopped him in the arc of light at the turn of the stair. He lifted his eyes to see that woman, in her costume of old time, descending, but the illusion of it was gone. The thing was now only a lifeless picture hanging in its frame -- a sheet of painted canvas from which no disturbing influences emerged. For the fraction of a second surprise held him, then the sound of some one moving in the corridor above caught his ear. Some one walked there, was come now to the stairway, was descending. And the next moment Caroline Childers, coming hurriedly down, saw the Duke of Dorset standing on the step by the window. She stopped instantly, and, like one in terror, put up her hands to her face, her fingers wandering into her hair.