As she stood there puzzling over this, the room went suddenly dark. The occupants of the house had doubtless gone to another part of the cottage to retire for the night. She was left with two alternatives: to call a policeman and have the place raided or to return quietly to the university and think the thing through. She chose the latter course.
After discovering the number of the house and fixing certain landmarks in her mind, she returned to the elevated station.
“They’ll not dispose of the books, that’s certain,” she told herself. “The course to be taken in the future will come to me.”
Stealing silently into her room on her return, she was surprised to find her roommate awake, robed in a kimono and pacing the floor.
“Why, Florence!” she breathed.
“Why, yourself!” Florence turned upon her. “Where’ve you been in all this storm? Five minutes more and I should have called the matron. She would have notified the police and then things would have been fine. Grand! Can you see it in the morning papers? ‘Beautiful co-ed mysteriously disappears from university dormitory in storm. No trace of her yet found. Roommate says no cause for suicide.’”
“Oh!” gasped Lucile, “you wouldn’t have!”
“What else could I do? How was I to know what had happened? You hadn’t breathed a word. You—”
Florence sat down upon her bed, dug her bare toes into the rug and stared at her roommate. For once in her life, strong, dependable, imperturbable Florence was excited.
“I know,” said Lucile, removing her watersoaked dress and stockings and chafing her benumbed feet. “I—I guess I should have told you about it, but it was something I was quite sure you wouldn’t understand, so I didn’t, that’s all. But now—now I’ve got to tell someone or I’ll burst, and I’d rather tell you than anyone else I know.”