In pantomime she indicated an exit.
“But, Miss Venable, you can’t mean . . .”
“What can’t I mean, young man?”
Edwin blanched.
“The streets,” he said.
One look at her stony countenance told him that the streets were precisely what she did mean.
He stumbled up to his room, dropped into a chair, and tried to collect his thoughts. In the rural calm of his sheltered life he had never felt the raw edge of existence before. This was stark life. He would read a bit to compose his mind, he decided. He opened the book Valerie Keat had given him.
Some words he knew, some he did not know, some he suspected. A hot flush of shame began to mantle his brow. At Chapter Four, he threw the book from him. He dare not lift his eyes to Emerson’s. Hardly knowing what he was doing, he marched down-stairs, holding the book at arm’s length before him. One idea was uppermost in his mind: he must take back the book to its owner.
He knocked with the gargoyle knocker, and Valerie Keat came to her studio door in a Chinese mandarin coat, thrown hurriedly about her.