the hotel she asked his number and was carried up in the lift. On the
landing she paused a moment, disconcerted--it had occurred to her that
he might not be alone. But she walked on quickly, found the number and
knocked.... Moffatt opened the door, and she glanced beyond him and saw
that the big bright sitting-room was empty.

"Hullo!" he exclaimed, surprised; and as he stood aside to let her enter
she saw him draw out his watch and glance at it surreptitiously. He was
expecting someone, or he had an engagement elsewhere--something claimed
him from which she was excluded. The thought flushed her with sudden
resolution. She knew now what she had come for--to keep him from every
one else, to keep him for herself alone.

"Don't send me away!" she said, and laid her hand on his beseechingly.

XLV

She advanced into the room and slowly looked about her. The big vulgar
writing-table wreathed in bronze was heaped with letters and papers.
Among them stood a lapis bowl in a Renaissance mounting of enamel and
a vase of Phenician glass that was like a bit of rainbow caught in
cobwebs. On a table against the window a little Greek marble lifted its
pure lines. On every side some rare and sensitive object seemed to be
shrinking back from the false colours and crude contours of the hotel
furniture. There were no books in the room, but the florid console under
the mirror was stacked with old numbers of Town Talk and the New York
Radiator. Undine recalled the dingy hall-room that Moffatt had lodged in
at Mrs. Flynn's, over Hober's livery stable, and her heart beat at the
signs of his altered state. When her eyes came back to him their lids
were moist.

"Don't send me away," she repeated. He looked at her and smiled. "What
is it? What's the matter?"

"I don't know--but I had to come. To-day, when you spoke again of
sailing, I felt as if I couldn't stand it." She lifted her eyes and
looked in his profoundly.

He reddened a little under her gaze, but she could detect no softening
or confusion in the shrewd steady glance he gave her back.

"Things going wrong again--is that the trouble?" he merely asked with a
comforting inflexion.

"They always are wrong; it's all been an awful mistake. But I shouldn't
care if you were here and I could see you sometimes. You're so STRONG:
that's what I feel about you, Elmer. I was the only one to feel it that
time they all turned against you out at Apex.... Do you remember the
afternoon I m