At the hotel she asked his number and was carried
up in the lift. On the landing she paused a moment,
disconcerted—it had occurred to her that
he might not be alone. But she walked on quickly,
found the number and knocked.... Moffatt opened
the door, and she glanced beyond him and saw that
the big bright sitting-room was empty.
“Hullo!” he exclaimed, surprised; and
as he stood aside to let her enter she saw him draw
out his watch and glance at it surreptitiously.
He was expecting someone, or he had an engagement
elsewhere—something claimed him from which
she was excluded. The thought flushed her with
sudden resolution. She knew now what she had
come for—to keep him from every one else,
to keep him for herself alone.
“Don’t send me away!” she said,
and laid her hand on his beseechingly.
She advanced into the room and slowly looked about
her. The big vulgar writing-table wreathed in
bronze was heaped with letters and papers. Among
them stood a lapis bowl in a Renaissance mounting of
enamel and a vase of Phenician glass that was like
a bit of rainbow caught in cobwebs. On a table
against the window a little Greek marble lifted its
pure lines. On every side some rare and sensitive
object seemed to be shrinking back from the false
colours and crude contours of the hotel furniture.
There were no books in the room, but the florid console
under the mirror was stacked with old numbers of Town
Talk and the New York Radiator. Undine recalled
the dingy hall-room that Moffatt had lodged in at
Mrs. Flynn’s, over Hober’s livery stable,
and her heart beat at the signs of his altered state.
When her eyes came back to him their lids were moist.
“Don’t send me away,” she repeated.
He looked at her and smiled. “What is it?
What’s the matter?”
“I don’t know—but I had to
come. To-day, when you spoke again of sailing,
I felt as if I couldn’t stand it.”
She lifted her eyes and looked in his profoundly.
He reddened a little under her gaze, but she could
detect no softening or confusion in the shrewd steady
glance he gave her back.
“Things going wrong again—is that
the trouble?” he merely asked with a comforting
inflexion.
“They always are wrong; it’s all been
an awful mistake. But I shouldn’t care
if you were here and I could see you sometimes.
You’re so strong: that’s what
I feel about you, Elmer. I was the only one to
feel it that time they all turned against you out
at Apex.... Do you remember the afternoon I met
you down on Main Street, and we walked out together
to the Park? I knew then that you were stronger
than any of them....”
She had never spoken more sincerely. For the
moment all thought of self-interest was in abeyance,
and she felt again, as she had felt that day, the
instinctive yearning of her nature to be one with his.
Something in her voice must have attested it, for she
saw a change in his face.
