2
The next evening, coming to his room, he heard the girl moving about in hers.
He had decided, with that part of his mind which dealt with questions of practical fact, that she was not really Phyllis. He had not mentioned his queer notion about her to Rose-Ann. But if it pleased him to think his neighbour was Phyllis, why shouldn’t he?
It did please him; and in some odd way helped him in his work. She seemed to bring with her into his place of dreams some breath of sane and kindly reality. Her unseen presence there in the next room took some of the fever out of his strange dramatic fantasies, made them more human. He wrote more easily, with greater zest; and in the intervals of his writing it was comforting to hear her movements, her mere steps across the floor, the sound of paper rustling in her hands, and sometimes the bubbling of coffee over an alcohol lamp.
When she made the coffee the pungent fumes of it found their way through the locked door which separated his room from hers.... He smiled, thinking how startled she would be if he should knock on that door, and demand a cup of coffee.... At this point he had to remind himself that it was not really Phyllis there on the other side of that door.