The next morning, early, Mary was surprised to find Julie up and dressed. The hotel was closing that day. The trunks had to be locked and taken down. Julie watched her moving about.
“If I could get out of this room—it is horrible.”
A hotel room before the departure of its occupant, with its torn newspapers, remnants of food, bedclothes thrown in a heap—there is nothing more desolate, more inexpressibly forlorn.
They went down to an empty room on the ground floor, misnamed the “children’s playroom.” The pale women were unmarried or childless. Julie moved continually from one window to another; when she saw Father Cabello and Floyd coming up the walk, she shrank into a corner, a terrified hunted thing.
Father Cabello found Floyd very quiet; whatever may have been his feelings, he had them under perfect control. He answered the priest’s questions in as few words as possible, and listened without comment to his sophistical justification of Julie.
“Perhaps your wife was not all to blame.”
“Perhaps not.”
“You know Julie’s nature—she is easily influenced.”
“Yes, I know.”
“The man must have persecuted her.”