The sullen morning light diffused itself through the room, mingling ironically with the pretty glow cast by the pink-shaded electric globes, while the two forlorn grotesques regarded each other, unconscious of each other's grotesqueness, the girl disheveled and haggard, the man with rough gray coat unbuttoned, showing the rumpled evening dress; her toque miserably awry, his black tie riding above his collar, the bow somewhere behind his ear. And the tragedy of tragedies of a young girl's life was unfolded.
"My God, what am I to do?"
Septimus stared at her, his hands in his trousers pockets. In one of them his fingers grasped a folded bit of paper. He drew it out unthinkingly—a very dirty bit of paper. In his absent-minded way he threw it towards the fire, but it fell on the tiled hearth. In moments of great strain the mind seizes with pitiful eagerness on the trivial. Emmy looked at the paper. Something familiar about its shape struck her. She leaned forward, picked it up and unfolded it.
"This is a check," she said in a matter-of-fact tone. "Did you mean to throw it away?"
He took it from her and, looking at it, realized that It was Clem Sypher's check for two hundred pounds.
"Thanks," said he, thrusting it into his overcoat pocket.
Then his queerly working brain focused associations.
"I know what we can do," said he. "We can go to Naples."
"What good would that be?" she asked, treating the preposterous question seriously.
He was taken aback by her directness, and passed his fingers through his hair.