His eyes shifted from her face.
"What has happened since?" she repeated.
Woolf would not answer her. He got up and went to her little inlaid bureau, picked up a pen, squared his elbows and began writing something. Quivering with emotion, her breast heaving, her breath coming in gasping sobs, she stood where she was, incurious as to what he was doing. Presently he turned, and placed a piece of paper on the table.
"You can stay on here till the end of the quarter," he said. "After that I shall sublet it. And here"—he pushed the paper toward her—"is a little present for you."
She took a stumbling step toward him, arms outstretched, her poor face working.
"Fred! Don't go!" she shrieked.
But he had got to the door. He would go. Nothing she could say or do would stop him. She had just enough presence of mind left not to follow him. Even in that moment of distress she had the sublime unselfishness to refrain from making a scene beyond the privacy of the flat—on his account.
She tottered back to the table, clutching at it for support, stared down at the slip of paper he had left there—paper with a pretty lacy pattern, and read:
"Pay to Miss Delamere ... or order Twenty-five pounds."
The words danced before her eyes like little black mocking devils.... Twenty-five pounds! The price which Woolf thought sufficient to buy her off!