第15章

At the desk the night porter, after a vain search through the pigeon-holes, was disposed to think that a letter or telegram had in fact been sent up for the gentleman; and Darrow, at the announcement, could hardly wait to ascend to his room.Upstairs, he and his companion had the long dimly-lit corridor to themselves, and Sophy paused on her threshold, gathering up in one hand the pale folds of her cloak, while she held the other out to Darrow.

"If the telegram comes early I shall be off by the first train; so I suppose this is good-bye," she said, her eyes dimmed by a little shadow of regret.

Darrow, with a renewed start of contrition, perceived that he had again forgotten her letter; and as their hands met he vowed to himself that the moment she had left him he would dash down stairs to post it.

"Oh, I'll see you in the morning, of course!"A tremor of pleasure crossed her face as he stood before her, smiling a little uncertainly.

"At any rate," she said, "I want to thank you now for my good day."He felt in her hand the same tremor he had seen in her face.

"But it's YOU, on the contrary--" he began, lifting the hand to his lips.

As he dropped it, and their eyes met, something passed through hers that was like a light carried rapidly behind a curtained window.

"Good night; you must be awfully tired," he said with a friendly abruptness, turning away without even waiting to see her pass into her room.He unlocked his door, and stumbling over the threshold groped in the darkness for the electric button.The light showed him a telegram on the table, and he forgot everything else as he caught it up.

"No letter from France," the message read.

It fell from Darrow's hand to the floor, and he dropped into a chair by the table and sat gazing at the dingy drab and olive pattern of the carpet.She had not written, then; she had not written, and it was manifest now that she did not mean to write.If she had had any intention of explaining her telegram she would certainly, within twenty-four hours, have followed it up by a letter.But she evidently did not intend to explain it, and her silence could mean only that she had no explanation to give, or else that she was too indifferent to be aware that one was needed.

Darrow, face to face with these alternatives, felt a recrudescence of boyish misery.It was no longer his hurt vanity that cried out.He told himself that he could have borne an equal amount of pain, if only it had left Mrs.

Leath's image untouched; but he could not bear to think of her as trivial or insincere.The thought was so intolerable that he felt a blind desire to punish some one else for the pain it caused him.

As he sat moodily staring at the carpet its silly intricacies melted into a blur from which the eyes of Mrs.

Leath again looked out at him.He saw the fine sweep of her brows, and the deep look beneath them as she had turned from him on their last evening in London."This will be good-bye, then," she had said; and it occurred to him that her parting phrase had been the same as Sophy Viner's.

At the thought he jumped to his feet and took down from its hook the coat in which he had left Miss Viner's letter.The clock marked the third quarter after midnight, and he knew it would make no difference if he went down to the post-box now or early the next morning; but he wanted to clear his conscience, and having found the letter he went to the door.

A sound in the next room made him pause.He had become conscious again that, a few feet off, on the other side of a thin partition, a small keen flame of life was quivering and agitating the air.Sophy's face came hack to him insistently.It was as vivid now as Mrs.Leath's had been a moment earlier.He recalled with a faint smile of retrospective pleasure the girl's enjoyment of her evening, and the innumerable fine feelers of sensation she had thrown out to its impressions.

It gave him a curiously close sense of her presence to think that at that moment she was living over her enjoyment as intensely as he was living over his unhappiness.His own case was irremediable, but it was easy enough to give her a few more hours of pleasure.And did she not perhaps secretly expect it of him? After all, if she had been very anxious to join her friends she would have telegraphed them on reaching Paris, instead of writing.He wondered now that he had not been struck at the moment by so artless a device to gain more time.The fact of her having practised it did not make him think less well of her; it merely strengthened the impulse to use his opportunity.She was starving, poor child, for a little amusement, a little personal life--why not give her the chance of another day in Paris? If he did so, should he not be merely falling in with her own hopes?

At the thought his sympathy for her revived.She became of absorbing interest to him as an escape from himself and an object about which his thwarted activities could cluster.

He felt less drearily alone because of her being there, on the other side of the door, and in his gratitude to her for giving him this relief he began, with indolent amusement, to plan new ways of detaining her.He dropped back into his chair, lit a cigar, and smiled a little at the image of her smiling face.He tried to imagine what incident of the day she was likely to be recalling at that particular moment, and what part he probably played in it.That it was not a small part he was certain, and the knowledge was undeniably pleasant.