Nobody was in the hall. It was not an hour of arrival or departure; and the man in the green apron she had seen there before, who at odd moments became that which in better hôtels is uninterruptedly a concierge, was nowhere to be seen, either. She had to get on a chair, the trains to Berlin were so high up on the great sheet, and tremblingly she kept an eye on the street door, through whose glass panels she could see people passing up and down the street, and they in their turn could and did see her. Yes—there was a night train at 1.30. It came from Rome. Travellers might arrive by it. The hôtel door would be open. Her thoughts flew. It got to Berlin at six something of the morning after the next morning.
Suddenly the glass door opened, and she jumped so violently that she nearly fell off her chair, and she fled upstairs, panic-stricken, without even looking to see if it were Ingram.
Safe in her room she was horrified at herself for such a panic. How was she going to do everything there was to be done if she were like that? She stood in the middle of the floor twisting her hands. If in her life she had needed complete self-control and clear thinking and calm acting she knew it was now. But how to keep calm and clear when her body was shaking with fear? She felt, standing there struggling with herself, so entirely forlorn, so entirely cut off from warmth and love, so horribly with nothing she could look back to and believe in and nothing she could look forward to and hope in, that just to speak to somebody, just to speak to a stranger who because he was a stranger would have no prejudices against her, would simply recognise a familiar distress—for surely the other human beings in the hôtel must all at some time have been unhappy?—seemed a thing of comfort beyond expressing. Her longing was intolerable to get close for a moment to another human soul, to ask of it how it had fared when it, too, went down into the sea without ships, leaving its ships all burned behind it, and yet its business had inexorably been in deep waters. "Oh, haven't you been unhappy, too?" she wanted to ask of it "haven't you sometimes been very unhappy? Dear fellow-soul—please—tell me—haven't you sometimes felt bitter cold?"
But there was no one; there was no brotherhood in the world, except at the rare obvious moments of common catastrophes and deaths.
She began to walk up and down the room. Half-past one that night was the hour of her escape, and somehow between now and then she must get the money. Perhaps by some chance he had left it in his room? Forgotten in a moment of carelessness in the pocket of the coat he had changed when they arrived that afternoon? It was not likely, for he was, she had noticed, of an extreme neatness and care about all such things. He never forgot. He never mislaid. Still—there was the chance.
She opened the door again, this time in deadly fear, for perhaps he would be coming back, not choosing after all to stay out there having supper.
There was no one in the passage. His room, she knew, was farther down; she had seen him going into it, four doors down on the same side as hers. She went out and stood a moment listening, then began to walk along towards it with an air of unconcern as though rightfully going down the corridor till she came to his door; then with her heart in her mouth she bolted in.
The lights from the street and the houses opposite shone in through the unshuttered window, and she could see into every corner of the shabby hôtel bedroom, a reproduction of the one she was in herself, trailed over dingily by traces of hundreds of commercial travellers and smelling memorially, as hers did, too, of their smoke and their pomades. She was hot and cold with fear; guilty as a thief. His coat hung behind the door. She ran her trembling fingers over it. Not a thing in any of his pockets. Nowhere anything that she could see. His unpacking had been done with orderliness itself. Of course he would not forget his pocket-book. With a gasp that was almost relief she slipped out of the room, shut the door quickly behind her, and assuming what she tried to hope was an unconcerned swagger, a sort of "I am-as-good-as-you-are" air for the impressing of any one she might meet, walked down the passage again.
Just as she reached her door Ingram appeared, hurrying up the stairs two steps at a time.
She clutched hold of the handle of her door, suddenly unable to stand.