“You won’t tell her till to-morrow—to-morrow, say, after three?”
He found the letters and drew them out of their pigeonhole.
“All right,” he almost shouted. “I won’t tell her. But, for God’s sake, leave me alone and let me go. If you keep on following me round this way I won’t answer for what I’ll do.”
“You promise then,” she said, ignoring his heat. “You promise you’ll not tell her till after three?”
He turned from the desk, gave her a look of restrained passion, and said, “I promise,” then passed by her as she stood in the doorway and walked to the stair-head. Here his valise stood, and snatching it up he ran down the stairs and out of the house.
Bernice, hearing the door shut, returned to her room and went on with the work of sorting her wardrobe and packing her trunks. She did it deliberately and carefully, looking over each garment, and folding the choicer articles between sheets of tissue paper. At midnight she had not yet finished, and under the blaze of the gases, looking very tired, she went on smoothing skirts and pinching up the lace on bodices as she laid them tenderly on the trays that stood on the bed, the table, and the sofa. The night was far spent before everything was arranged to her satisfaction and she went to bed.
She was up betimes in the morning. Eight o’clock had not struck when she was making a last tour of the parlor, picking up small articles of silver and glass that she crowded down into cracks in the tightly-packed trunks. At breakfast the Chinaman, an oblique, observant eye on her, asked her what he should prepare for lunch. Conscious that if she told him she would not be back he might become alarmed at the general desertion and demand his wages, she ordered an even more elaborate menu than usual, telling him she would bring home a friend.
She breakfasted in her wrapper and after the meal finished her toilet with the extremest solicitude. Never had she taken more pains with herself. Though anxiety and strain had thinned and sharpened her, the fever of excitement which burnt in her temporarily repaired these ravages. Her eyes were brilliant without artificial aid; her cheeks a hot dry crimson that needed no rouge. The innate practicality of her character asserted itself even in this harassed hour. Last night she had put the purple orchid in a glass of water on the bureau. Now, as she pinned it on her breast, she congratulated herself for her foresight, the pale lavender petals of the rare blossom toning altogether harmoniously with her dress of dark purple cloth.
Before she left the room she locked the trunks and left beside them a dress suit-case packed for a journey. Standing in the doorway she took a hurried look about the apartment—a last, farewell survey, not of sentiment but of investigation, to see if she had forgotten anything. A silver photograph frame set in rhinestones caught her eye and she went back and took it up, weighing it uncertainly in her hand. Some of the rhinestones had fallen out, and she finally decided it was not worth while opening the trunks to put in such a damaged article.
It was only a quarter past nine when she emerged from the flat. She took the down-town car and twenty minutes later was mounting the steps to Bill Cannon’s office. She had been motionless and rigidly preoccupied on the car, but, as she approached the office, a change was visible in her gait and mien. She moved with a light, perky assurance, a motion as of a delicate, triumphant buoyancy seeming to impart itself to her whole body from her shoulders to her feet. A slight, mild smile settled on her lips, suggesting gaiety tempered with good humor. Her eye was charged with the same expression rendered more piquant by a gleam—the merest suggestion—of coquettish challenge.