Suddenly she heard a shrill tinkle, and with a beating heart she stood still in the middle of the room. It was the telephone in her dressing-room—a call, no doubt, from Adelaide Painter. Or could Owen have learned she was in town? The thought alarmed her and she opened the door and stumbled across the unlit room to the instrument. She held it to her ear, and heard Darrow’s voice pronounce her name.
“Will you let me see you? I’ve come back—I had to come. Miss Painter told me you were here.”
She began to tremble, and feared that he would guess it from her voice. She did not know what she answered: she heard him say: “I can’t hear.” She called “Yes!” and laid the telephone down, and caught it up again—but he was gone. She wondered if her “Yes” had reached him.
She sat in her chair and listened. Why had she said that she would see him? What did she mean to say to him when he came? Now and then, as she sat there, the sense of his presence enveloped her as in her dream, and she shut her eyes and felt his arms about her. Then she woke to reality and shivered. A long time elapsed, and at length she said to herself: “He isn’t coming.”
The door-bell rang as she said it, and she stood up, cold and trembling. She thought: “Can he imagine there’s any use in coming?” and moved forward to bid the servant say she could not see him.
The door opened and she saw him standing in the drawing-room. The room was cold and fireless, and a hard glare fell from the wall-lights on the shrouded furniture and the white slips covering the curtains. He looked pale and stern, with a frown of fatigue between his eyes; and she remembered that in three days he had travelled from Givre to London and back. It seemed incredible that all that had befallen her should have been compressed within the space of three days!
“Thank you,” he said as she came in.
She answered: “It’s better, I suppose——”
He came toward her and took her in his arms. She struggled a little, afraid of yielding, but he pressed her to him, not bending to her but holding her fast, as though he had found her after a long search: she heard his hurried breathing. It seemed to come from her own breast, so close he held her; and it was she who, at last, lifted up her face and drew down his.
She freed herself and went and sat on a sofa at the other end of the room. A mirror between the shrouded window-curtains showed her crumpled travelling dress and the white face under her disordered hair.