“Would you just please ask if they have ‘Some Colonial Chairs’?” she cried hastily to Miss Waters. “I think I see someone I know....”
And rushed out. But he was no longer sitting on the bench. She caught a glimpse of him, vanishing round the corner.
She went back to Miss Waters, and had to carry home a huge, heavy volume which she remembered Miss Amy having had from the library some years ago.
She got into the bus with it, waved a cheerful good-bye to Miss Waters, and went off home.
CHAPTER FOUR
I
She was lost in an apathy of despair. He had come and he had gone, this lover for whom she had been waiting for years. In all her solitude, her restlessness, her great discontent, that had been her great hope; any day she might meet him, any day it might happen, and her life would really begin at last.
And now it was over; he was gone, and there was nothing further to expect. She let herself into the flat—her home—her prison—her grave.
There was a great bolt of white stuff lying folded on the sewing machine to be made up into respectable and sturdy underclothing for Miss Amy. After she had taken off her hat and jacket and washed her hands, she sat down before this work, which she usually attacked with such earnestness, such professional interest. But her heart failed; she let the scissors drop idly in her lap; to-day she could not work, to-day she didn’t care. Her sombre eyes stared straight before her, at the transparency of moonlit Venice.
“Oh!... If I’d been alone, we’d have taken a walk together ... I’d have had a chance to be—attractive.... Now, of course, I’ll never see him again. How can I? I don’t know where he lives.... He’ll never bother with me any more. Why should he? Of course, he knows lots and lots of beautiful society girls....”