“Good-night,” said the girl again.
“I say,” said Paul, as though he were embarrassed, “perhaps—well—wouldn’t it be rather nice if I were to take you home? We could—eh—go somewhere—dance—first.”
“Dance! At one o’clock?” she laughed. “I don’t think we could.”
“Of course.”
She made no move to go, nor did Paul, who was standing close to her. At length she took hold of his arm.
“Well, are you coming?”
They walked out of the restaurant and down the deserted street together.
The night spent itself. Some sort of a dawn crept across the city and touched the edges of the windows in the rear of 355 McDougal Street. As the grey light penetrated the room on the third floor, a girl, who had been lying across the body of a dead man, arose, looked stupidly about her, rubbed her eyes, and went over to the window where she gazed across the damp Greenwich Village roofs. She thought, perhaps, that she was going mad, with this silence which penetrated her whole nature, like the cold dawn that had just penetrated the night. But, strangely enough, it was not altogether her own loneliness, nor yet the painful sense of loss at the death of her father, nor even the ghostliness of his figure on the bed, that was thus driving her toward insanity. Rather, it was the remembrance of Paul’s face, the knowledge of his suffering for her, and the feeling that, although she could never love him—really love him, as she had pictured love in her girlhood dreams—still, the death of her father had removed the last tangible excuse which she had to offer him. She felt that it was not right to add to his sorrow for Hanaré’s death, a still larger grief caused by her own selfishness.