June was ending in a very warm week. Work in the studio lagged, partly because Dulcie, preparing for graduation, could give Barres little time; partly because, during June, that young man had been away spending the week-ends with his parents and his sister at Foreland Farms, their home.
From one of these visits he returned to the city just in time to read a frantic little note from Dulcie Soane:
“Dear Mr. Barres, please, please come to my graduation. I do want somebody there who knows me. And my father is not well. Is it too much to ask of you? I hadn’t the courage to speak to you about it when you were here, but I have ventured to write because it will be so lonely for me to graduate without having anybody there I know.
“Dulcie Soane.”
It was still early in the morning; he had taken a night train to town.
So when he had been freshened by a bath and change of linen, he took his hat and went down stairs.
A heavy, pasty-visaged young woman sat at the desk in the entrance hall.
“Where is Soane?” he inquired.
“He’s sick.”
“Where is he?”
“In bed,” she replied indifferently. The woman’s manner just verged on impertinence. He hesitated, 110 then walked across to the superintendent’s apartments and entered without knocking.