My thoughts ran on, picturing the home and little children we would have. Children would be walls about our love, making it secure. For these I was hungry—desperately afraid lest the hope of them should be withdrawn. In imagination they seemed already mine, I would speak my heart out: she should understand before it was too late that my need was also hers.
I entered the hostel. In the office the old woman nodded above her knitting. I roused her and asked for my candle.
“Ah, Monsieur,” she said in apology, “I had not thought. For a room so small I supposed that one would be sufficient. I have given Madame the candle. If Monsieur will wait, I will fetch another.”
In my surprise I told her that it did not matter.
I felt my way up the unlit stairs. At the bedroom-door I knocked. Fiesole’s voice just reached me, whispering to me to enter. On the threshold I paused, peering into the darkness. The floor was bare; there was little furniture. In the shadows against the wall, a canopied, high-mattressed bed loomed mountainous. Through the window, reaching almost to my feet, a ray of moonlight slanted; in it, gleaming white, stood Fiesole.
My heart was in my throat. I could not speak. We watched one another; as the silence lengthened, the space between us seemed impassable.
She held out her arms; her hoarse voice spoke, yearning towards me with its lazy sweetness. “Even now, if you want to, you may go, Dannie.”