"It's a rickety old hole, but Flop would suffocate any place else. Perhaps I'd better take your hand. The stairs aren't all they might be and you don't know where the broken places are."
Jean gave him her hand and they went up through the blackness together. At the bottom of the last short flight they stopped.
"Flop usually lights the lantern. He must have forgotten. Just wait a moment." He left her and ran lightly up ahead. Jean could not see him, but she could feel him looming above her on the landing, and hear the low rustle of his clothes as he felt hurriedly through them for a match. She had never before been so alone with a man.
"Oh, shucks!"
The word dropped on the tensity of Jean's mood like a drop of ice water. She wished he had said "damn." It was like hearing a lion say "Tut!"
"I guess I'll have to lead you. I haven't a match and there are none on the ledge. Flop must be out."
They went up the few remaining steps, along a narrow hall to a door at the end of a passage. Herrick turned the handle and stepped back to let Jean enter. But Jean did not move.
"Oh," she cried softly. And again: "Oh."
"I'm glad you like it," he whispered after a moment, and drew her gently across the threshold and closed the door.
Every cent that Flop had made for the last three years, and much that he had borrowed, had gone to the fitting of this room. The walls were of gray, satin-smooth eucalyptus. Soft, worn rugs lay before great couches piled with pillows. Along the west wall, wide windows ran the length of the room, from the rough stone fireplace to the glass door that opened on a tiny iron balcony. All the windows were shaded now with heavy green curtains run on silken ropes. The afterglow of a scarlet sunset came in rose and pale gold through the curtain openings, and lay in pools of light on the dull rugs.