She got up quickly, and freed herself. He put her cloak about her in silence. They passed out of the box into the crowd that filled the corridor.
“It’s pouring with rain,” said Rotherby, as they emerged into the vestibule. “Wait while I get the car!”
He left her, and she took her stand at a corner of the steps, idly watching the press of people that thronged past her on to the pavement. Her sleep had left her slightly dazed, physically cold. The thought of the dear Devon she had left only that morning had sunk very far below the surface of her consciousness. It was as if years as well as distance separated her from it, and all she knew now was the ache of weariness and a certain dull disgust with everything about her. A man on the pavement below her, wearing an ulster with a cap drawn down over his eyes, evidently waiting for a conveyance, caught her passing attention because the set of his shoulders was somewhat reminiscent to her of the lonely horseman who had awaited her coming on the moor, but she was too apathetic to bestow more than a cursory glance upon any, and she shrank at the moment with something like panic from all things that might pain her. She was too tired to endure any more that night.
Out of the press of hurrying people Rotherby detached himself and came to her. “It’s all right. Take my arm! The car is just here.”
She obeyed him, for the throng was great, and her only desire to escape the vortex of humanity and find the rest she so sorely needed. He piloted her through the crowd. For a few seconds she felt the rain beating upon her uncovered head, and then she was sunk upon the cushions in the darkness of the car with Rotherby beside her, and the glittering streets slipping past with kaleidoscopic rapidity.
The slashing of the rain upon the window-panes penetrated her consciousness. “What a wet night!” she murmured.
“Yes, fiendish,” said Rotherby. “But I’ll soon have you out of it. You’re dead beat, aren’t you?”
“Very, very tired,” she answered, and dropped back into silence.
The car slid on through the night. They turned out of the glaring streets, and in the dimness Frances closed her eyes again. She did not want to talk; and Rotherby’s mood seemed to coincide with hers, for he sat in utter silence by her side.
She was hardly aware that the car had stopped when suddenly he spoke. “You’ll come in here for a few minutes? I’ll tell the man to wait.”