I didn’t sleep well that night. The memory of Mr. Masters’ set sullen face kept me wakeful. At four I got up, lit the light and tried to read Kidd’s Social Evolution. Through the ceiling I could hear Mr. Hamilton’s subdued snoring on the floor above. It seemed like the deep and labored breathing of that submerged world whose upward struggle I was following through Mr. Kidd’s illuminating page.
After breakfast, when no sign or word had come from Lizzie, I decided to stay in till I heard from her. I dawdled through the morning and when Emma was cleaning up went out on the landing and listened. The upper floors were wrapt in quiet. I stole up a flight and a half and looked at her door—tight shut and not a sound. I went down again worried, though it was possible she had gone out and I not heard her. After lunch I opened the register and listened—complete silence. During the rest of the afternoon I sat waiting for her footfall. Dusk came and no woman had mounted the stairs. At seven a tap came at my door and Count Delcati pushed it open.
The count brought letters from the Italian aristocracy to its New York imitation and goes to entertainments that the rest of us read of in the papers. He was arrayed for festival and looked like an up-to-date French poster, a high-shouldered black figure with slender arms slightly bowed out at the elbows. His collar was very stiff, his shirt bosom a clear expanse of thick smooth white. He wore his silk hat back from his forehead, and his youthful yet sophisticated face, with its intense black eyes and dash of dark mustache, might have been looking at me from the walls of the Salon Independent.
He removed his hat, and standing in the doorway, said:
“Have you seen her to-day?”
“No,” I answered. “Have you?”
He shook his head.
“I think she must be away. When I came home at six I went up there and knocked, but there was no answer.”
There was nothing in this to increase my uneasiness. She came and went at all hours, often taking her dinner at what she called “little joints” in the lower reaches of the city. Nevertheless my uneasiness did increase, gripped hold of me as I looked at the young man’s gravely attentive face.
“Have you seen her since the concert?” he asked.