“It is with regret that the management begs to inform you of a previous engagement of rooms 16 and 18 for the 15th instant, necessitating that the rooms be vacated by that date.”
Heloise came to the door, and stood there observing me. She was tucking back a rebellious strand of hair; and she looked very slim and girlish, standing that way with both arms raised.
I went over to the casement window, and threw it open. Then I sat down by it, on one of the chairs of bent iron.
She came toward me, disturbed but hesitant.
I handed her the paper. She read it, standing very st ill. Then she looked up. Her face twisted a little.
“Why, Anthony,” she said, with a catch in her voice, “we 're put out of the hotel!”
The sentence ended in an odd, explosive little laugh. Then, abruptly, she slipped to the floor beside me, threw her arms across my knees, hid her face on them, and sobbed.
There was nothing I could say, of course. The matter was absurdly unimportant compared with the grimmer uncertainties before us. Yet it had hit me with almost the same force.
I laid my hand on her shoulder. I stroked her head. After a little she groped for my hand with one of hers and, when she found it, clung tightly to it.
And all the time I was thinking how like a child she seemed. I believe that is the supreme quality of the artist—childlikeness. It is a quality that carries the adult worker through hells of suffering and heavens of unearthly joy; and it is a quality for which small allowance is made in this particular world.