It was still night in the Bat Hotel as Loveland and Bill slipped their keys into the key-box, and tip-toed downstairs; but outside, though the lights of New York had been put out, the light of the world, climbing up the far horizon, had begun to gild the city's domes.
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Izzie of the Almond Eyes
It was not often that Loveland came into personal relations with sunrise, and to see the rose and golden banners float high and higher above the roofs and sleeping windows of New York, was like being first gazer at some great painting in a Private View. There was hope and promise of joy in such beauty, but he felt wretchedly out of the picture in his rumpled evening clothes.
The virginal purity of dawn, translucent above the turgid darkness of the town, made Lesley Dearmer seem suddenly to be very near him, so that the air shone with her invisible presence. How sweet she was, how delicately quaint in all her thoughts, how kind to others despite her clear wit, and how sure of ultimate goodness, as she was of life!
Lesley had said that she had "faith in his other side," as she had faith in the other side of the moon, though she did not expect ever to see either. "You will always go on getting what you want," she had prophesied just before they parted. What would she think of that prophecy if she were even to dream of this humiliated figure, creeping out of night to a new day?
Bill's hatchet face glimmered sallow and shabby through the pearly twilight, and there was a frayed look under the patient, humourous eyes. "Are you cold?" he asked.
"A little," replied Val. "But I don't mind."
"You ain't used to the climate yet," said Bill, "and I'd make you squeeze into my overcoat, only I'm a bit too sketchy underneath. Can't afford to get me winter wardrobe back from my uncle's yet."