Unmoored at last, her spirit swaying, enveloped in memories of him, she gave herself to the flood—overwhelmed, as tide on tide rose, rushing over her—body, mind, and soul.
She closed her eyes, leaning there heavily amid the cloudy curtains; she moved back into the room and stood staring at space through wet lashes. The hard, dry pulse in her throat hurt her till her under lip, freed from the tyranny of her small teeth, slipped free, quivering rebellion.
She had been walking her room to and fro, to and fro, for a long time before she realised that she had moved at all.
And now, impulse held the helm; a blind, unreasoning desire for relief hurried into action on the wings of impulse.
There was a telephone at her elbow. No need to hunt through lists to find a number she had known so long by heart—the three figures which had reiterated themselves so often, monotonously insistent, slyly persuasive; repeating themselves even in her dreams, so that she awoke at times shivering with the vision in which she had listened to temptation, and had called to him across the wilderness of streets and men.
“Is he at home?”
“—!”
“Would you ask him to come to the telephone?”
“—!”
“Please say to him that it is a—a friend.... Thank you.”