“Your fren, she no wait. You come too slow. She go away. Gooda-bye.”
Miss Waters was frantically distressed, and protested through the telephone. But the operator had no consolation to give her, and Tony and his wife were smiling and indifferent. She left the shop, after buying an orange to placate Tony, and returned to her flat. But her distress did not subside; she felt that she had been called upon and had not responded, that in some way she had failed someone.
And suddenly came to the conclusion that it must have been Rosaleen. She “just felt” that it was. And it worried her beyond measure. She knew that Rosaleen was quite alone in her studio now, for Mell and Bainbridge had gone to Provincetown for the month of July, and she felt sure that something was wrong. Rosaleen wouldn’t have called her out for nothing. She peered into the studio; the meek pupil was still drawing a “study” of empty boxes; then she hurried out of the flat and back to Tony’s fruit store.
It was Rosaleen’s own voice that answered, and she gave an odd cry:
“Miss Waters!... I’d been trying....”
“I thought so, dear! Was there——”
“Please come right away!” Rosaleen interrupted her, with desperate earnestness. “Just as quickly as you possibly can! Please, please hurry!”
“What’s wrong, my dear?”
“Oh, never mind! I’ll tell you when you get here. Hurry!”
Her great anxiety made the poor old soul slower than ever. With fumbling, trembling fingers she tried to dress in such a way as to be ready for any emergency; then she went into the studio to excuse herself to the pupil, and couldn’t get away from her; stood there saying utterly unnecessary things, repeating herself. At last she was hurrying across the park in the glare of the July sun, trying to walk her fastest, but with a nightmare sensation of being as stiff as a wooden doll, and covering no ground. She hurried up the dark stairs and knocked on the studio door. It was flung open and Rosaleen confronted her.