Parsinova unlocked her door, stepped into the little foyer and after an instant’s pause to take off hat and dustcoat, crossed the hall to her living-room. Once more cretonne hung in the doorway and slips of it covered the furniture. Summer had served as sufficient excuse to convert the place to its former simplicity. The sight of cathedral chairs and gold cushions had for the past few weeks depressed her to the point of mania. More than once she wanted to tear them to bits.
The dim light from the foyer sifted weirdly into the dark, playing here and there like ghost hands lifting the shadows. She felt her way toward the fireplace, dropped to the floor, her head touching the chair arm, and stared at the spot where in the flames she had visualized the scenes he painted. It was blank now, just a vague square full of darkness, but it gave her back his voice, the sense of his strength, the caress of his arms. It sent once more sifting upward the aroma of cloudy pipe smoke through which he had wanted to see her face. Her eyes closed. Almost she sensed him there in the magic of one of those long silences that needed no words. Almost she could feel his touch upon her hair, her longing made it so real.
Tears came hot under her lids, the first she had shed since that night. They streamed shamelessly down her cheeks and onto the sheer clinging dress. All pose—and she had grown used to posing even to herself—slid from [60] ]her. Her poise slipped with it. The great Parsinova became just a lonely, huddled heap of a girl.
She lay so, whispering his name shamelessly into the darkness when suddenly it seemed that she was being lifted and drawn into the big chair. It was like embarking into some dreamland of her own making. She held her breath, choked with the fear that she might shatter it. The caress upon her hair, arms closing round her, lips seeking hers! It was not until she had the actual sense of a rough coat against her cheek that, galvanized with terror, she started up and backed toward the floor lamp that stood at one side of the fireplace.
The soft light went up. Hubert Randolph was sitting there! It was impossible of course! Slowly she went toward him, reached out a hand, touched his arm.
He laughed. “Oh, I’m real enough!”
She forgot her accent. At that moment she could not have assumed it even though the future, though life itself, depended on it. “But how—how—”
“I’ve been waiting for you since eleven-thirty,” he put in, apparently not noticing the difference. “I concluded I was entitled at least to a ‘good-by’ from the woman I love.”
She gazed at him silently a moment and then because her heart and throat were full, she voiced a triviality. “How did you get in?”
“Your little old woman! I bribed her. I’d had an idea I could go away without seeing you. Well, I couldn’t, that’s all.”