“This is the door,” Helen Monteith said.
“I know,” Mason told her. “The room’s rented... isn’t it, Della?”
She nodded wordless assent, and Mason needed only to study the tense lines of her face to know all that she could have told him.
Mason knocked on the door.
Someone on the inside stirred to life. Steps sounded coming toward the door.
Mason turned to Helen Monteith. “I think,” he said, “you’re going to have to prepare yourself for a shock. I didn’t want to tell you before, because I was afraid I might be wrong, but...”
The door opened. A tall man, standing very erect on the threshold, looked at them with keen gray eyes which had the unflinching steadiness of one who is accustomed to look, unafraid, on the vicissitudes of life.
Helen Monteith gave a startled scream, jumped back to collide with Mason who was standing just behind her. Mason put his arm around her waist and said, “Steady.”
“George,” she said, in a voice which was almost a whisper. “George!”
She reached forward then with a tentative hand to touch him, as though he had been vague and unreal and might vanish like a soap bubble into thin air at her touch.