The sheafs of new bills pinned to their paper bands lay in her lap for a long time before she touched them. Even then she merely lifted one packet and let it drop without even looking at it. So Grismer folded the bills and put them into her reticule. Then he took her slim left hand in both of his and held it while they rode on in silence through the electric glare of the metropolis.
At the station he dismissed the taxicab, bought a ticket and sleeping-car accommodations to Hudson—managed to get a state-room for her all to herself.
"You won't sleep much," he remarked, smiling, "so we'll have to provide you with amusement, Anne."
Carrying his suitcase, the girl walking beside him, he walked across the great rotunda to the newsstand. There, and at the confectionery counter opposite, he purchased food for mind and body—light food suitable for a young and badly bruised mind, and for a soul in embryo, still in the making.
Then he went over to another window and bought a ticket for himself to Pittsfield, and sleeping accommodations.
"We travel by different lines, Anne," he said, opening his portfolio and placing his own tickets in it, where several letters lay addressed to him at his basement studio. Then he replaced the portfolio in his breast pocket.
"I'll go with you to your train," he said, declining with a shake of his head the offices of a red-capped porter. "Your train leaves at 12.10 and we have only a few minutes."
They walked together through the gates, the officials permitting him to accompany her.
The train stood on the right—a very long train, and they had a long distance to walk along the concrete platform before they found her car.
A porter showed them to her stateroom. Grismer tipped him generously: