She took a step toward the door, hesitated, came back, and put a light hand on his shoulder.
“I'm sorry, dear Max.”
She had kissed him lightly on the cheek before he knew what she intended to do. So passionless was the little caress that, perhaps more than anything else, it typified the change in their relation.
When the door closed behind her, he saw that she had left her ring on the arm of his chair. He picked it up. It was still warm from her finger. He held it to his lips with a quick gesture. In all his successful young life he had never before felt the bitterness of failure. The very warmth of the little ring hurt.
Why hadn't they let him die? He didn't want to live—he wouldn't live. Nobody cared for him! He would—
His eyes, lifted from the ring, fell on the red glow of the roses that had come that morning. Even in the half light, they glowed with fiery color.
The ring was in his right hand. With the left he settled his collar and soft silk tie.
K. saw Carlotta that evening for the last time. Katie brought word to him, where he was helping Harriet close her trunk,—she was on her way to Europe for the fall styles,—that he was wanted in the lower hall.
“A lady!” she said, closing the door behind her by way of caution. “And a good thing for her she's not from the alley. The way those people beg off you is a sin and a shame, and it's not at home you're going to be to them from now on.”
So K. had put on his coat and, without so much as a glance in Harriet's mirror, had gone down the stairs. Carlotta was in the lower hall. She stood under the chandelier, and he saw at once the ravages that trouble had made in her. She was a dead white, and she looked ten years older than her age.