“I must go. I have no words now.... She is there. It must be nearly ten now. I must hurry to her.”
The engines in the house flagged and were silent.
The woman stood where he had left her, smiling.
7
Betty held her purse tightly in her hand, and certain thoughts were held as tightly in her brain, as she pressed against the wind.... It was something like going to a distant concert engagement in the night.... [Pg 272]Her limbs were uncertain, and there was a constant winging in her breast, as though it were the cage of a frantic bird. She did not mind. She could forget it—if only her eyes remained true. For the first time in months she was on her own strength, her own will. There was a sharp distress in the responsibility, but also an awakening of force.
The wind whipped her breath away, yet she liked the wild freedom of it—if only she could continue to see and remember what to say. The studio was a hideous blackness that drove her from behind. This was a new and consuming hatred. The two squares to the large uptown hotel where a cab was readily obtainable were long as a winter night; and the tension to remember seemed destroying her by the time she found a driver. She told him the station and the train.
“Plenty of time, Ma’am,” he said.
Her eyes filled with tears. It was true, then, that there was such a station, such a train, that there was time, and nothing had betrayed her. “I must not speak; I must not speak,” kept warning in her mind; “but he is so good to me!”
Now she felt the cold, as she rested a moment before the new ordeal at the station—destination, tickets, the Pullman, not to fall, not to speak any but the exact words.... The driver helped her out. Everything was familiar, but miraculously large.... She gave the man extra money, and the faintest, humblest “Thank you!” escaped her. He whistled a porter for her.
“The ticket window,” she said. And now she need only follow. It was warmer. It would be warm in the Pullman.... She took the young colored man’s arm. He turned with good nature.