A second glance into the inner room showed her that Miss Manuel was still sleeping. She regarded her distrustfully for an instant, and on a sudden impulse sat down at her desk and wrote a message on a sheet of the hotel paper.
"I am going out for the day. I will return to-night. Do nothing, consult no one. I am quite able to take care of myself. Don't make a sensation for the newspapers! ALICE STANSBURY."
"That last sentence will quiet her," she reflected, with cool satisfaction, as she pinned the note to the side of the mirror. "She won't care to advertise far and wide that she has temporarily mislaid a patient!"
The most difficult thing of all remained to be done. The outer door of her own room was locked and the key was missing. To leave the apartment she must pass through the room where Miss Manuel lay asleep. She held her breath, but crossed in safety, though Miss Manuel stirred and murmured something, as if subconsciously warned of danger. Miss Stansbury closed the door noiselessly behind her and stood silent for a moment in the hall, glancing about her and planning the wisest method of getting away. She knew better than to enter any of the hotel elevators. While there was no certainty that she would be detained if she did, there had been a great deal of interest in her when she arrived at the hotel, and there was every chance that some employe might think it a wise precaution to ask her nurse a question or two after she departed. Then Miss Manuel would be hot upon her trail, and her day would be spoiled. She crept cautiously along the rear halls, keeping out of sight on each floor when the elevators were passing, and meeting only strangers and one preoccupied porter. Her rooms were on the fifth floor, but she descended the four flights of stairs in safety, and, going triumphantly out of the rear entrance of the hotel, found herself in the quiet street on which it opened. The great building was on a corner, and as she crossed its threshold she saw a trolley-car passing along the avenue at her right. On a quick impulse she signalled. When it stopped she entered and seated herself in a corner, surveying her fellow-passengers with seeming unconcern, though her breath came fast. She was safe; she was off! She decided to ride on until she made her plans and knew in more detail what should be done with this gift of the gods, a day that was all her own.
It had been a long time since she had been alone, she suddenly remembered. There had been outings, of course, and shopping expeditions and the like, but always Miss Manuel or one of her kind had been at her elbow—sometimes professionally cheerful, sometimes professionally grave, but at all times professionally watchful. The woman exulted fiercely in her new-found liberty. She had hours before her—free, glorious hours. She would use them, fill them, squander them in a prodigal spending, following every impulse, indulging every desire, for they were hers and they were her last. In the depths of her brain lay a resolution as silent, as deadly, as a coiled serpent waiting to strike. She would enter no asylums, she would endure no more "absences," she would have no more supervision, no more consultations, no more half-concealed fear of friends, no more pity from strangers. There was a way of escaping all this forever, and she knew it and would take it, though it led across the dim threshold over which she could never return.
The car hummed as it sped along. At a distance she saw an entrance to Central Park, and from the inside the branches of trees seemed to wave a salute to her in honor of her freedom. She signalled to the conductor and left the car, retracing her steps until she entered the Park. She was far up-town, near the northern end of it, and the paths, warm in the spring sunshine, were almost deserted. For a while she strolled idly about, her senses revelling in the freshness and beauty around her, in the green vistas that opened to right and left, and the soft breeze that fanned her face. Children, riding tricycles or rolling hoops, raced past her; and once, after she had walked almost an hour, a small boy of four slipped his hand into her gloved one and trotted beside her for a moment, to the open scandal of his nurse. She smiled down at him, pleased by the touch of his little fingers. When he left, as abruptly as he had joined her, and in response to a stentorian Irish summons from the rear, she felt a rather surprising degree of regret. The momentary contact had given her a pleasant sense of companionship; for the first time it came to her that it would be better to have a sharer of this day of days—no hireling, no scientific-eyed caretaker, but a little child or a friend, some one, any one, whom she liked and who liked her, and who, like the little boy, did not know the truth about her.
Her spirits dropped as suddenly as they had risen, and she felt tired and disappointed. Almost unconsciously she dropped on a bench to rest, her eyes still following the figure of the child, now almost out of sight around a distant bend. The bench was off the path, and she had been too preoccupied when she sat down to notice that it had another occupant; but as the figure of her little friend vanished and she turned her eyes away with a sigh, she found herself looking into those of a man. He was very young, hardly more than a boy, and he occupied the far end of the seat, one arm thrown across the back of it, his knees crossed, and his body so turned that he faced her. The thing she saw in his eyes held her own fastened to them, at first in surprise, then in sudden comprehension. It was hunger. With a long look she took him in—the pinched pallor of his smooth, handsome young face, the feverish brightness of his gray eyes, the shabbiness of his well-made, well-fitting clothes, even the rent in the side of one of his patent-leather shoes. His linen was clean, and his cuffs were fastened with cheap black links; she reflected instinctively that he had pawned those whose place they obviously filled, and then her mind returned at once to her first discovery, that he was hungry. There was no mistaking it. She had never seen hunger in a face before, but she recognized it now. He had taken off his hat and dropped it on the bench beside him. His brown hair was short and wavy, and one lock on his left temple was white. He had been writing a note, or possibly an advertisement for work, with a stub of lead-pencil on a scrap of paper resting on his knee, and now he suddenly raised his eyes—either in an abstracted search for the right word or because her appearance had startled him.
Without hesitation she spoke to him.
"Pardon me," she said, impersonally. "May I ask you some questions?"
He looked at her, and the understanding of his situation revealed in her glance brought the blood to his face. He straightened himself, his lips parting for a reply, but she gave him no time to speak.