"I must run off," said she, starting up, busy, proud, falsely calm, the general of a victorious army as the battle draws to a close. She embraced him again, and he actually felt comforted.... She was gone.
"As I grow older," he reflected, "I'm hanged if I don't understand life less and less."
II
He was listening to the distant rhythm of the music when he mistily comprehended that there was no music and that the sounds in his ear were not musical. He could not believe that he had been asleep and had awakened, but the facts were soon too much for his delusion and he said with the air of a discoverer: "I've been asleep," and turned on the light.
There were voices and footsteps in the corridors or on the landing,—whispers, loud and yet indistinct talking, tones indicating that the speakers were excited, if not frightened, and that their thoughts had been violently wrenched away from the pursuit of pleasure. His watch showed two o'clock. The party was over, the last automobile had departed, and probably even the tireless Eliza Fiddle was asleep in her new home. Next Mr. Prohack noticed that the door of his room was ajar.
He had no anxiety. Rather he felt quite gay and careless,—the more so as he had wakened up with the false sensation of complete refreshment produced by short, heavy slumber. He thought:
"Whatever has happened, I have had and shall have nothing to do with it, and they must deal with the consequences themselves as best they can." And as a measure of precaution against being compromised, he switched off the light. He heard Eve's voice, surprisingly near his door:
"I simply daren't tell him! No, I daren't!"
The voice was considerably agitated, but he smiled maliciously to himself, thinking:
"It can't be anything very awful, because she only talks in that strain when it's nothing at all. She loves to pretend she's afraid of me. And moreover I don't believe there's anything on earth she daren't tell me."