She turned and led the way. He followed her, smelling the stuffiness that was like dirty blankets pressed against the nose. There was no window to the stairs, and at the corner it was so dark that he stumbled. He heard her laugh in the distance, then an opened door threw light down. He was in the room where he had been before, enwrapped still in its heavy curtains, and lit even on this lovely day with electric light heavily clouded under the pink silk shades. She was still laughing, standing at the other side of the table.
He stood awkwardly fingering his hat. He had nothing to say, and they were both silent a long time. Then simply because he was expecting the hated woman's arrival at any moment he began:
"I've been wanting to come all these three days. I've thought of nothing else, of how you said I could help you—and—get you out of this. I will. I will—I'll do anything. You can come now if you like, and I'll take you to my sister's—she's very nice and you'll like her—and they can do anything they like, but they shan't take you away. . . ."
He was quite breathless with excitement. She stared at him gravely as though not understanding what he said. When he saw the puzzle in her eyes his eloquence was suddenly exhausted and he could only stammer out:
"That's—that's what you said the other day—that you wanted to escape."
"To escape?" she repeated.
"You said that."
She moved her hands impatiently, and her voice dropped until it was almost a whisper.
"When you came the other day I was foolish because mother had just been angry. I was excited because she had been angry before that horrid fat woman—you remember? I hate her to be angry when she's there because she likes it. She hates me because I'm young and she's old. . . . Of course I can't get away—and how could I go with you? I don't know you. Why, you're only a boy!" Then she added reflectively, as though she were giving the final conclusive argument, "and you've got ink on your nose."
Henry committed then what is always a foolish seeming act at the very best, he took out a not very clean handkerchief, licked a corner of it with his tongue and rubbed his nose.