“It's on the third floor, Number seventeen, near the staircase. My friend's next door.”
She began to talk of books. She was interested in Christian Science, she said, and spoke of a book. I forget altogether what that book was called, though I remember to this day with the utmost exactness the purplish magenta of its cover. She said she would lend it to me and hesitated.
Willersley wanted to go for an expedition across the lake that afternoon, but I refused. He made some other proposals that I rejected abruptly. “I shall write in my room,” I said.
“Why not write down here?”
“I shall write in my room,” I snarled like a thwarted animal, and he looked at me curiously. “Very well,” he said; “then I'll make some notes and think about that order of ours out under the magnolias.”
I hovered about the lounge for a time buying postcards and feverishly restless, watching the movements of the other people. Finally I went up to my room and sat down by the windows, staring out. There came a little tap at the unlocked door and in an instant, like the go of a taut bowstring, I was up and had it open.
“Here is that book,” she said, and we hesitated.
“COME IN!” I whispered, trembling from head to foot.
“You're just a boy,” she said in a low tone.
I did not feel a bit like a lover, I felt like a burglar with the safe-door nearly opened. “Come in,” I said almost impatiently, for anyone might be in the passage, and I gripped her wrist and drew her towards me.