"But Miss von Schwarzenberg has gone out!"
"No! no! She's upstairs. Come quick, or it will be too late." He rushed to the elevator and rang. "It's coming!" he cried over his shoulder.
"Is he crazy?" Nan asked, dazed, but following Napier.
"It is probably some device to prevent your going out with me," he said as the elevator stopped.
Again the boy sped down that interminable upper corridor, the two hurrying at his heels.
"I'll wait for you," Napier said. They had come to the door which the boy had not dared to open till he was supported by the presence of others. He knocked now, opened, and stood back.
Greta, in the arm-chair, the fur coat at her feet, had flung bare arms out across the table and half sat, half lay there, moaning, with hidden face.
Nan rushed in and took the woman in her arms. Napier, full of disgust for what he looked on as a piece of cheap theatricalism, was startled as the face fell back against Nan's shoulder. That it should be so blotched, so disfigured in that short time, bore witness to the violence of whatever the feeling was that had torn and still was tearing the woman. More than by any other sign, the fact that her heavy hair had become loosened unbecomingly, grotesquely, brought Napier the conviction that for once Greta von Schwarzenberg wasn't acting. The great yellow mass of braids and curls had lurched over one ear, giving a look more of drunkenness than grief to the convulsed face. That one glimpse was enough. Napier turned away and paced the corridor for those leaden-footed minutes till Nan ran out, looking blindly up and down.
"Where are you? Oh, the most cruel, awful thing has happened! She has just had his letter. Greta's lover—Count Ernst Pforzheim is dead." The girl's eyes were full of tears. "Think of poor Greta running away up here to hide herself so as not to interfere with my pleasure!" She turned back to the room.
"Have you heard—any details?" Napier detained her to ask.