He thought of Mabel, with her pearls about her throat, and her red lips, and he laughed aloud. Who, seeing Mabel, would look again at that other? Not he!
He went back to his old room and packed his bag; then he walked over to a little Italian restaurant for his dinner. He had minestrone and ravioli—queer food for that blond son of vikings; but he was used to things like that. He had eaten stranger food in more unlikely places—in Naples, in Calcutta, in Marseilles. He had seen the world—the beauty of it and the worst of it.
He took his time over his dinner, and it was nearly nine o’clock when he ran up the steps of Oscar Anders’s house and rang the bell. Nobody came to open the door. The young man set down his heavy bag, and frowned impatiently. He was cold and wet, he was tired, and for some reason he did not feel happy. He rang again.
Then she came. She opened the door, and he entered and threw down his bag. He did not want to look at her, but he could not help seeing her. She was wearing a white blouse with a funny little plaid bow at the collar, and a long, dark skirt. She was altogether foreign in those clothes, with her dark braids about her head, and her subdued air—foreign, and yet in some way familiar to him, and dear.
“Well!” he said, with his masterful smile. “Here I am!”
“Oh, I’m so sorry!” she replied.
“What about?”
“My mother didn’t understand you. She thought you weren’t coming back.”
“I told her I was.”
“But she doesn’t understand English very well. She thought—I’m so sorry—but just a little while ago we let the room.”