n Mr. Royall said:
"We'll step down and have some supper, if you say so."

The thought of food filled her with repugnance; but not daring to
confess it she smoothed her hair and followed him to the lift.

An hour later, coming out of the glare of the dining-room, she waited in
the marble-panelled hall while Mr. Royall, before the brass lattice
of one of the corner counters, selected a cigar and bought an
evening paper. Men were lounging in rocking chairs under the blazing
chandeliers, travellers coming and going, bells ringing, porters
shuffling by with luggage. Over Mr. Royall's shoulder, as he leaned
against the counter, a girl with her hair puffed high smirked and nodded
at a dapper drummer who was getting his key at the desk across the hall.

Charity stood among these cross-currents of life as motionless and inert
as if she had been one of the tables screwed to the marble floor. All
her soul was gathered up into one sick sense of coming doom, and she
watched Mr. Royall in fascinated terror while he pinched the cigars in
successive boxes and unfolded his evening paper with a steady hand.

Presently he turned and joined her. "You go right along up to bed--I'm
going to sit down here and have my smoke," he said. He spoke as easily
and naturally as if they had been an old couple, long used to each
other's ways, and her contracted heart gave a flutter of relief. She
followed him to the lift, and he put her in and enjoined the buttoned
and braided boy to show her to her room.

She groped her way in through the darkness, forgetting where the
electric button was, and not knowing how to manipulate it. But a white
autumn moon had risen, and the illuminated sky put a pale light in the
room. By it she undressed, and after folding up the ruffled pillow-slips
crept timidly under the spotless counterpane. She had never felt such
smooth sheets or such light warm blankets; but the softness of the bed
did not soothe her. She lay there trembling with a fear that ran through
her veins like ice. "What have I done? Oh, what have I done?" she
whispered, shuddering to her pillow; and pressing her face against it
to shut out the pale landscape beyond the window she lay in the darkness
straining her ears, and shaking at every footstep that approached....

Suddenly she sat up and pressed her hands against her frightened heart.
A faint sound had told her that someone was in the room; but she must
have slept in the interval, for she had hea