“My chance is yours; we may both have been born for this moment.”
Long after he had stretched himself outside her door, he felt that in the austerity of the four bare walls she still crouched watching from her bed.
IV
He slept restlessly. The music and the dancing rarely halted. Once when he roused, it was with the suffocating sense that a man was bending over him, fumbling at the handle of Santa's door. As he sat up, he was convinced that the man looked back just before he vanished around the corner.
When he finally wakened, it was in the chill of dawn. He was surrounded by a ghostly stillness. Rising softly, he slipped down the passage and out into the public rooms of the hotel. It was as though a wizard had waved his wand. The merry-makers lay strewn about carelessly, wherever sleep had overtaken them. In the pale light of morning, robbed of animation, their faces showed waxlike and wan. Swords, which had clattered martially, sprawled grotesquely by crumpled bodies. Uniforms looked tarnished, dresses shabby. Girls, with their lips parted and their hair disordered, lay with heads stretched back in their lovers' arms. Over all was spread the weariness of folly.
Tiptoeing from group to group, he searched for the man who had tried Santa's door. Nowhere could he find him. Returning to her room, he tapped lightly. He was afraid to make more noise in that atmosphere of menace. Receiving no answer, he pushed the door stealthily and peered across the threshold. He had feared lest he might find her gone; there she lay curled up in her cot, her hair poured across her pillow, her face cushioned against her hollowed arm. Gray light falling from a narrow window clothed her with a lonely pathos. Bending over her, he shook her shoulder. “Santa.”
She sat up with a start.
“Has it happened?”
“Not yet. They're sleeping like the dead.”
“Then why—?”