He turned again to the keyboard, and, playing by ear, with a truly sensitive touch, ran into the Feuer Motif of “Die Walküre.”
“God, that’s great—that is great!” he said solemnly. “That is it—earth, fire, and water!”
He tried another start—shut the piano viciously and rose.
“Damn New York!” he said, with his nose to the curtainless window, peering out at the opposite side of the court, with its chilly, bare outline. “Damn New York for an unfriendly stuck-up port, anyhow! Dozens of poor devils sitting around nursing their misery and afraid to say hello to another human being. Danged if I don’t try it!” he said, all at once, and, slapping on his hat, he went out of his room and up to the corner studio, near which a dozen boxes were piled.
“I’ll try each in turn,” he said grimly, and knocked.
But a moment’s pounding convinced him that the studio was unoccupied, and he turned to the opposite room, which lay next to his, and rapped on it as though to summon forth a spirit.
The door was presently opened, and the figure of a young woman appeared.
“My name’s King O’Leary,” he said desperately, taking off his hat. “I’m looking for some mortal being, man, woman or child, who’s as plumb lonely as I am, to go out and help me through this night. I’m not a thug or a pickpocket, and I’m not fresh. Anywhere else on this blessed globe except here, people would understand me. Well, how about it? I suppose you think I’m crazy?”
She stood a little defensively, her hands behind her back in an attitude which seemed to bar the way into the studio, which lay behind, warm and inviting with the charm her feminine touch had laid over its crude outlines, as the spreading ivy softens the ugliness of a ruin. Her hat and coat were on a near-by chair, as though she were preparing to go out. Though she stood against the light, he was struck with the oddity of her appearance—a certain defiant, youthful erectness in her body, the depth of darkness that lay over her, in the black of her hair, which was braided and coiled about her forehead, and the brown oval of the face—brown as an Indian’s. He could not see the eyes for the moment.