Nevertheless when the elevator did not instantly answer his summons, Jerome ran up the four flights to his office.
In the middle of her dictation to Minnie, Jean heard his step and stopped. She sat, arrested, for what seemed an endless time, while Minnie chewed her pencil and stared at her own new patent leather pumps.
"The usual ending—to those three last—and that will be all for the present."
"Yes'm." Still chewing, Minnie went.
Jerome Stuart was back. In a few moments perhaps he would come in. He would come in with no memory of that last moment on the sidewalk in his manner, because that was the only way the old relations could go on. And she would meet him, with careless surprise at this return, two weeks sooner than he had expected. He would tell her of his vacation and she would report the lack of any exciting developments while he had been away. Perhaps he would suggest finishing the piers.
He would sit in that chair where she would have to face him, unless she deliberately turned her back. She would listen while he talked. Outwardly they would be the good comrades they had always been. But the man who had desired her would be there, too, and the woman who had sat on the roof and cried, who had appraised her flesh and estimated her power to rouse again his desire, would be there, too. Jean shuddered. She wished he would come now, instantly, and then decided to go before he could.
She had changed her mind for the tenth time, when Jerome's door opened, and her choice was gone. He was in the outer office, saying good morning to Minnie. He knocked and Jean rose, forced by some inner need, to meet him standing. "Come in."
"Back on the job, you see. How's the world got along in my absence?"
He was coming towards her, the outer man and the other, shifting places dizzily, coming straight towards her, lit by the glare of those moments when she had considered living with him in closest intimacy.
"You certainly do look like all outdoors." She had managed to say it.