"There is no immediate danger. But in two weeks' time at the most.... However, I shall look in again this afternoon. And every morning. You may count on that."
"Then you have decided to lodge somewhere else?"
"Yes ... for the present."
She let him go without further questions.
The week passed in an atmosphere of arrested events. It seemed to Claire as if the currents of life had become ominously frozen, that they were storing up a sinister flood in the icy chains of apprehension. Danilo came twice a day to see Mrs. Robson. He was excessively polite, unbending, professional. Claire was powerless before such premeditated cruelty. The night of the concert drew near. Danilo never so much as mentioned it. Finally Claire gathered the courage to telephone Mrs. Condor.
"I suppose," she said, "that everything is going according to schedule. Really, I haven't had a chance to talk to Danilo about it. He has been so busy."
The upshot of this telephone message was that Mrs. Condor called in the afternoon.
"Confess!" she said to Claire. "Things have gone wrong."
"He won't allow me to explain.... It is horrible! I don't know what to do! And my mother is dying!... How much do you fancy he knows?"