It was the first time she had ever tidied up my room like that. It touched me. I stood motionless for a moment, looking about.
“Did you see him?” she asked, very low.
“Yes,” said I, still looking about the room, “I saw him. It is going to be all right, Heloise—all right. We are to meet again at two.” Then I indicated the white blossoms. “You have made it seem almost like a home.”
“Oh—that?” she murmured. “It was hard to wait. I had to keep myself busy.” She said it very gently. And it thrilled me to realize that, whatever strange event might come to her and to me, we had at last arrived at a fine spirit of companionship.
Just to think that she could do this friendly act, feeling in her heart that I would not misinterpret it or in some crude masculine way take the advantage—I like that, even though I distinctly do not deserve it.
But she was speaking, still in that low voice, but breathlessly, I thought:—
“How will it be 'all right,' Anthony? What do you mean? What have you done?”
I felt that I must be very gentle. But with her, as with that man over yonder in the other hotel, it was the time for frank talk. For as I had insisted with Crocker, her life was her own to live; and I could not go on now without her approval.
I drew my one comfortable chair to the window for her. She took it. Then I explained to her, just as briefly as I could, that Crocker had agreed to consider setting her legally free, on condition that she go to Paris and work out her career independently of myself or any other man.
She heard me without a word, sitting there, her hands folded in her lap. I could not make out the expression of her face. It was grave, of course, but composed—with no sign of the hysteria that I had considered as a possibility. Indeed, I am not certain but what she was rather calmer than I.