Matters were thus when, on New Year’s eve, Inga Sonderson returned to the Arcade after a solitary supper at the Childs restaurant on the avenue. She had no sooner turned the hall than down the somber stretch she noticed with surprise a brilliant swath of light. She went on, wondering what this could portend, for since their chance meeting, she had not laid eyes on her neighbor. Through the opening of his studio door she could see boxes, furniture and bric-à-brac piled toward the ceiling like wreckage washed against the shore. At the grating of her key in the lock, Dangerfield loomed into the door-frame, dressed for the street, and saw her, with a swift, appealing light in the storm-ridden face.
“Come in,” he said, without preliminaries, as though he had been waiting in desperation for her return.
She rather liked this abruptness, so devoid of male coquetry, instinctively warned that the man must have called to her in his need. He had returned into the studio, as though sure of her coming. She entered, closed the door, and found him by the window that gave on the misery of the tenements, seated in a chair, his back bent, his fists doubled up and pressed under his chin.
“Talk to me,” he said, in abrupt demand.
She stood a little away from him, looking down at his suffering, divining the forces of doubt and despair wrestling within his soul. In the midst of the surging confusion of the studio, they were in a shallow clearing. She went over and laid her hand on his shoulder, holding it there until she forced him to look up.
“Let me help,” she said quietly.
The sound of her voice seemed to arrest his attention. He turned restlessly, his hand closing over her wrist.
“Bad night?”
He nodded, and his eyes wandered from her. All at once he rose with a great breath, stretched out his arms, and then, with a brusque turn, came back, looking at her with even a touch of suspicion in his eyes.