“I want to speak to you!” he whispered. “Slip into the back room and wait!”
A little reluctant, but very curious, she did so; and for five very long minutes stood in there, with the gas turned low, and the two cots piled with imposing male overcoats and sticks, and the furs and wraps of the girls. The sound of the music and the dancing feet made her impatient: someone shouted “One more before we go! Put on a good record, Enid!” She really couldn’t have endured it much longer, if Lawrence hadn’t come. But, though he had said he wanted to speak to her, he stood there speechless, fingering his monocle, not even looking at her. At last he said:
“Er ... Rosaleen!... It occurred to me—wouldn’t you like to stop for your Miss Waters?”
She thought she had never heard a kinder, a more generous idea.
“Why, yes, I would!” she said. “It’s very nice of you to think of that!”
“Then we’d better arrange this way. You go downstairs with the others, but slip into my studio. The door’s open and it’s dark; no one will notice you. Then I’ll make some excuse to get away from them, and I’ll come back here with a taxi.”
“A taxi! We won’t need a taxi. It’s only a step. And I don’t see why we need to make such a secret of it all——”
“Enid would make a row,” he said with a frown. “No; do it my way, if you please!”
V
The dawn was coming when the taxi drew up to the door. Lawrence got out, helped Rosaleen to descend, and while he paid the enormous reckoning she stood in the dim street, over which hung that strange air of suspense which comes before the sunrise. The street lights still burned, but against a palely clear sky; the sparrows in the park were beginning to stir.