For an instant Imrie thought that Judith was going to faint. All the colour left her face. As she stood there, trembling and swallowing hard, her pallor showing green in the dim and flickering gas-light, he thought he had never seen anything more pitiful.
"Was you a friend of his'n?" asked the stout woman, apparently rather surprised at the reception of her intelligence.
"Yes," whispered Judith, drawing the words in through compressed lips, "I was a—friend." Then she removed her hand from the newel post, which had steadied her, and drew herself erect with what seemed like a physical effort.
"I wonder if it would be possible to ... has his room—been changed? Could I ... see it?"
"Bless yer heart, child, that ye may," said the landlady sympathetically, as if she had solved the problem. Imrie hated her violently for her solution. "Jist step this way," she added soothingly.
She led the way up interminable flights of stairs, which creaked and groaned no matter how lightly they tried to walk. Finally they stopped climbing, and proceeded down a narrow hall, lighted, after a fashion, by a single gas lamp. Every now and then a draft from somewhere set it quivering gustily.
Judith was walking as if in a dream. Imrie felt certain that she saw none of the sights which he saw, nor heard the sounds, nor smelled the odours. But he was wrong. She felt them all with ten times the keenness that he did.
At length their guide halted, breathing heavily, and after fumbling with a bunch of rusty keys, swung open a door which creaked dismally. A breath of air, faintly pungent with the odour of drugs, came from the room beyond.
Judith and Imrie stood silently waiting in the hall. The only sound was a muttered imprecation from the landlady as she stumbled into something in her search for the light. When she found it, the jet was clogged, and it whistled and danced as if animate, piping a march to their entrance.
The room was incredibly small, one wall being reduced to less than the height of a man by the sharp slope of the roof: and there was only one window. It was a vivid moment, even to the stout woman, who did not understand it at all. To Imrie, who thought he understood it, but did not, the background of the play was burned into his memory never to be erased.