After Buford had left, Dominick called up his friend on the telephone telling him that he would be unable to meet him at dinner. He knew that Berny could hear every word he uttered, and with indescribable dread he expected that she would open her door and accost him. But again she preserved an inviolate invisibility, though beneath her portal he could see a crack of light and could hear her moving about in the room.
He went into his own room, lit the gas, and began packing his trunks. He was dazed and stupefied by what had occurred, and almost the only clearly-defined idea he had was to leave the house and get far from the presence of the woman who had so ruthlessly poisoned his life. He was in the midst of his packing when the Chinaman summoned him to dinner, but he told the man he cared for nothing and would want no breakfast on the following morning. The servant, who by this time was well aware that the household was a strange one, shrugged his shoulders without comment and passed on to the door of his mistress’ room, upon which he knocked with the low, deferential rap of the Chinese domestic. Berny’s voice sounded shrilly, through the silence of the flat:
“Go away! Let me alone! If that’s dinner I don’t want any.”
The sound of her voice pierced Dominick with a sense of loathing and horror. He stopped in his packing, suddenly deciding to leave everything and go, go from the house and from her as soon as he could get away. He thrust into a valise such articles as he would want for the night and set the bag by the stair-head while he went into the parlor to find some bills and letters of his that he remembered to have left in the desk. As he passed Berny’s door, it flew open and she appeared in the aperture. The room behind her was a blaze of light, every gas-jet lit and pouring a flood of radiance over the clothes outspread on the bed, the chairs, and the floor. She, herself, in a lace-trimmed petticoat and loose silk dressing-sack, stood in the doorway staring at Dominick, her face pinched, white, and fierce.
“What are you doing?” she said abruptly. “Going away?”
“Yes,” he answered, stopping at the sight of the dreaded apparition. “That’s my intention.”
“Where are you going?” she demanded.
He gave her a cold look and made no answer.
“Are you going to your mother’s?” she cried.
He moved forward toward the parlor door and she came out into the passage, looking after him and repeating with a tremulous, hoarse persistence, “Dominick, answer me. Are you going to your mother’s?”