Nance could not help noticing as he told her all this, how quaintly he reproduced in his exaggerated way the precise gestures he had indulged in. “Per Bacco! I had only three pounds left,” he said, and as he shrugged his shoulders and glowered at her under a flickering lamp from eyes sunken deep in his heavy face, she realised of what it was he had been all this while vaguely reminding her—of nothing less, in fact, than one of those saturnine portrait-busts of the Roman decadence, at which as a child she used to stare, half-frightened and half-attracted, in the great Museum.
The first thing he did, he told her, when the sound of the clock brought him to his senses, was to empty his pockets on the top of the chest-of-drawers which was, except for the bed and a couple of rickety chairs, the only article of furniture in the room. An errant penny, rolling aside from the rest, tinkled against the edge of his washing basin. “Not three pounds!” he muttered and leered at himself in his wretched looking glass.
It was precisely at that moment that the sound of voices struck his ears, proceeding from the adjoining room.
“I had spent half the night,” he whispered, drawing his companion closer to his side as a couple of tipsy youths pushed roughly by them, “lying awake listening. I felt a queer kind of shame, yes, shame, as I realised how near I was to you. You know I knew nothing of you then, absolutely nothing except that you went to work every day and lived with some sort of elderly person and a younger sister. It was this ignorance about you, child, that made my situation so exciting. I waited breathlessly, literally petrified, in the middle of the room.”
Nance at this point felt herself compelled to utter a little cry of protest.
“You ought to have made some kind of noise,” she said, “to let us know you were listening.”
But he waved aside her objection, and continued: “I remained petrified in the centre of the room, feeling as though the persons I listened to might at any moment stop their conversation and listen, in their turn, to the frantic beating of my heart. I heard your voice. I knew it in a moment to be yours—it had the round, full sweetness”—his arm was about her now—“of your darling figure. ‘Good-bye!’ you called out and there came the sound of a door opening upon the passage, ‘Good-bye! I’m off. Meet me to-night if you like. Yes, soon after six. Good-bye! Look after each other.’
“The door shut and I heard you running down the stairs. I felt as though that ‘Meet me to-night’ had been addressed to myself. I crossed over to the window and watched you thread your way through the crowd in the direction of the Bridge. I knew you were late. I hoped you would not be scolded for it by some shrewish or brutal employer. I wished I had had the courage to go out on the landing and see you off. Why is one always so paralysed when these chances offer themselves? I might easily have taken a fellow-lodger’s privilege and bidden you good morning. Then I found myself wondering whether you had any inkling that I had been sleeping so near you that night. Had you, you darling, had you any such instinct?”
Nance shook her head, nor could he see the expression of her eyes in the quiet darkened square, across which they were then moving. They came upon a wooden bench, under some iron railings, and he made her sit down while he completed his tale. The spot was unfrequented at that hour, and above their heads—as they leaned back, sighing tranquilly, and he took possession of her hand—the branch of a stunted beech-tree stretched itself out, hushed and still, enjoying some secret dream of its own amid the balmy perfumes of the amorous night.
“May I go on?” he enquired, looking tenderly at her.