Miss Greta, at the bottom of the staircase, faithfully flanked on one side by Nan, by Madge on the other, paused to consider her friend's kind suggestion.
"You could be ready inside an hour if we both helped,"—Nan enlisted Madge as confidently as though there had never been a cloud between them.
"You'll have your things to pack, too," Miss Greta reminded Nan.
"Oh, I'll do that in ten minutes, after I've—after we've helped you." Nan's hand on Miss Greta's arm urged her to the enterprise.
"A—just a moment," Napier interrupted, the disorder of the raided room printed strong upon his inner vision. He saw it in pieces, like a Futurist picture—a corner of gaping drawer showing a confusion of papers, a glimpse of wardrobe-trunk dribbling flimsiness of lawn and froth of lace; in the foreground fierce, violent, malevolent, the broken metal shell of the false hat-box; Nan's eyes, no less clear, clearer than all else, looking down upon the chaos and indignity of a ruined life. She and the other "child," Madge, ought to be spared that spectacle. Over the newel of the banister Napier spoke directly to Nan for the first time since they had stumbled among rocks in the moonlight three weeks ago, fleeing before the tide that raced up the shore, and before the tide higher, more menacing, which had risen in their hearts. "If you were to get a telegraph form—if we could write out a telegram to send to Miss von Schwarzenberg's father—or—to—to—" he floundered.
"Yes," said Miss Greta. "To my father's agent, Schwartz."
"Anybody you like. We'll do our best"—he glanced at Singleton—"to get a message through."
Instead of going to the drawing-room for a telegraph-form, Nan took a scrap of paper out of her side pocket.
"Schwartz, chez Kalisch," Napier heard the dictation begin, before Madge created a diversion on her own account.
"Let me by, will you? I must go and tell Mother."