Her eyes roved around the empty room, faltered in their course, and the wandering gaze became a fixed stare. She had found a clew!
Upon the radiator she saw a bit of charred paper. She bent over it, studying it intently. But the message it had carried was illegible. A handful of black ashes. What was their secret? She did not touch them, but took a match, and kneeling on the floor slowly turned the charred paper around with the match in an effort to decipher something. Here and there a word could be seen, but nothing to convey any meaning to her fevered brain. She lit the match and holding it back of the legible letters managed to read “tell clerk” “Sana” “leave,” but that was all.
Deeply puzzled and not knowing what to make of it, she lighted another match, hoping to decipher other words. But before she had realized it, the flame caught the unburned part of the paper and destroyed it completely.
Unmindful of everything she sat on the floor, puzzled and heartbroken.
Brought to her senses by the chiming of midnight, the confused girl sought her room. Almost unconsciously she disrobed and threw herself upon the bed. Through the long hours of the night she lay with unclosed eyes and with every nerve strained to catch the sound of the returning footsteps of the one she loved so dearly. But she listened in vain. The dawn of the new day crept in upon her as she lay there given up to the grief that was hers.
She arose and called the desk clerk. He was sorry, but he could get no response from de Rochelle’s rooms, in spite of his efforts to do so.
Mechanically Sana dressed, walking about the room without intention or aim.
It was a little after six when she again entered de Rochelle’s room. It was still unoccupied—unoccupied, but yet tenanted with an almost tangible shadow—the presence of silence.
The thought that de Rochelle had deliberately deserted her did not enter Sana’s mind for quite a time. When it did, it tended to clear her brain, lend calmness to her being. She made a brave attempt to figure it out, saying to herself, “What for? And if so, what will become of me? What shall I do in this strange city?” And her thoughts went back to Paris and her childhood days, when she had someone to watch over her and guide her footsteps.
Sana realized her helplessness. She was alone. Dear as she was, her friend Mrs. O’Brien could not help her, nor could she help solve the mystery of de Rochelle’s absence. So she looked around the rooms once more and left.