“Oh there’s no obligation,” I said, “but people sometimes have preferences. I’m very sorry you’re going away.”
“What does it matter to you? You are going yourself.”
“As I’m going in a different direction, that makes all the greater separation.”
She answered nothing; she stood looking through the bars of the tall gate at the empty dusky street. “This grille is like a cage,” she said at last.
“Fortunately it’s a cage that will open.” And I laid my hand on the lock.
“Don’t open it”; and she pressed the gate close. “If you should open it I’d go out. There you’d be, monsieur—for I should never return.”
I treated it as wholly thrilling, and indeed I quite found it so. “Where should you go?”
“To America.”
“Straight away?”
“Somehow or other. I’d go to the American consul. I’d beg him to give me money—to help me.”