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.

XLV

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.