"Well what, Tom?" she said. "I won't lie to you—I haven't a place to go to here. I would have had, this afternoon, if I had succeeded. But by now, everything has changed. They—that is, my friends will assume that I have been captured by the Company. They won't be where I could find them, Tom. Say they are silly if you wish. But they will fear that the Company might—request me to give their names."
I said crisply, "Stay here, Rena. No—listen to me. You stay here. I'll get another room."
"Thank you, Tom, but you can't. There isn't a room in Anzio; there are families of suspendees sleeping in the grass tonight."
"I can sleep in the grass if I have to."
She shook her head. "Thank you," she repeated.
I stood between her and the door. "Then we'll both stay here. I'll sleep on the couch. You can have the bed." I hesitated, then added, "You can trust me, Rena."
She looked at me gravely for a moment. Then she smiled. "I'm sure I can, Tom. I appreciate your offer. I accept."
I am built too long for a hotel-room couch, particularly a room in a Mediterranean coastal fleabag. I lay staring into the white Italian night; the Moon brightened the clouds outside the window, and the room was clearly enough illuminated to show me the bed and the slight, motionless form in it. Rena was not a restless sleeper, I thought. Nor did she snore.
Rena was a most self-possessed girl, in fact. She had overruled me when I tried to keep the bellboy from clearing away the dinner service. "Do you think no other Company man ever had a girl in his room?" she innocently asked. She borrowed a pair of the new pajamas Defoe's thoughtful expediters had bought and put in the bureau. But I hadn't expected that, while the bellboy was clearing away, she would be softly singing to herself in the bath.