"It's a shame to let them cool off. We ought to whip the thing into final shape to-night, lock it up forever in typing. Besides, if you're not used to working in a racket, you may not be able to do it in the office to-morrow. And if you put it over you've got the job cinched."
"I know. I'll sit up all night, I suppose, and it can't be so bad just to have to copy it in the office."
"I'll tell you a better scheme than that. We'll go up to my place and type it now."
Jean had never been to Herrick's rooms and for a moment she hesitated. Then the absurdity of her convention struck her. She had been alone in Flop's when she scarcely knew Herrick at all, and for hours in the hills.
"Fine."
Herrick paid the sleepy waiter and tipped him so generously that he woke with the suddenness of a marionette. They departed, laughing under his effusive thanks.
Like Flop's, Herrick's room was the top floor of a dilapidated building that had once been a place of business but was now filled with cheap studios. It was large and barely furnished, with a long table, a desk, a couch and a few chairs. There were no curtains at the windows, and a tall office building, like a back-drop, cut into the night sky. It had never occurred to Herrick to think about the bareness of his room until he saw Jean's look of approval.
"A real workroom, in which we are going to write the hit of the Sunday edition."
He uncovered his typewriter and pulled the drop-light over the desk.
As Jean laid her things on the couch and took the chair Herrick drew up for her at the table, she thought: "It's like a large cell. In another age he might have been a monk."