No sooner had she got inside the door than the tears began to fall; and all the way up the four flights of dark stairway they were raining down her cheeks. She had to wipe them away before she could see to put the latchkey into the lock.
Everything neat, orderly, familiar; just as she had left it a few hours ago, and all seeming in its blank sobriety to rebuke her for her desperate hopes. She went into her own bare and chilly little room and lay down on the cot there, sobbing forlornly, clutching in her hand the card he had given her—a sort of talisman by means of which she could reconstruct the enchanted hour of that afternoon. She remembered every word he had said, every detail of his appearance. And, recollecting them, wept all the more to think what she must forego.
“Of course, I’ll never see him again!” she cried. “I’ll have to forget all about him....”
But she knew that she could not forget him. It seemed to her that she had never seen so remarkable, so attractive a person. His face, when he had turned round, that thin, dark face with its haughty nose, the underlip scornfully protruding, the serious regard of his black eyes....
She had not particularly noticed him at first, except as a gaunt and rather shabby young man sitting on the bench behind her on top of the bus. She had been absorbed in watching Fifth Avenue, which had, on that bright October afternoon, the absurd and exciting festival air it so unaccountably assumes. She was solemnly happy, singing under her breath, looking down at the people, the shops, the motor cars that were going by; when there came a sudden violent jolt and the coin she was holding had leaped out of her hand and fallen to the street below. And it was the only one she had!
She had sprung up in a panic; ready to jump off the bus and walk all the long way home, but at the top of the little stairway she had met the conductor coming up.
“Fare!” he had said, with suspicion.
“I just dropped it—a minute ago!” she explained. “I was ... I had a quarter in my hand—and it fell out....”
“Oh, it did, did it?” said he.
“I’ll get off at once,” she said.