"Good-night! Good-night, you dear boy! Oh, don't be sad! Just you remember—I'm here. . . ." Her quavering voice broke. "And thinking of you!" she ended in a gasp.
He stood like a stone, amazed, a little affronted. She drew back, but her trembling hand lingered on his head, and her anxious, troubled glance could not leave him.
"Will you try not to be sad?" she asked.
"I'm not sad," he answered, mildly.
"That's right!" she said, patting his head, and smiling weakly. "That's right."
At last she went, and he was closing the door, when she came back, in great haste.
"I've got something that's wonderful for making you sleep!" she whispered.
But the door was closed, and he leaned against it, grimly resolute.
"No, thanks!" he said.
Then he forgot her; not that he consciously repudiated thinking of her, but because this thing was so incredible and nebulous that it eluded him. If she wasn't before his eyes, she didn't, she couldn't exist.
He waked the next morning with more energy than he had had for a long time. He made up his mind to escape Miss Flotsam, to give up his room at once, and to be gone when she returned that evening.
"Without a word," he decided. "That's the kindest way. Then she can invent any sort of romance she likes to account for it. Poor little devil!"
But he was not to be let off so easily. Under his door was a note. In an infantile rage he put his foot on it.
"I won't read it!" he said.
Impossible! He had to read it, just as he was obliged to listen to all that she said. He picked up the envelope with a mental apology for the boot mark that sullied it, and, with a sigh, tore it open.
Like every appeal she made, it was too long. The words that might have touched him were repeated until they could only exasperate; she was not content with a simple explanation of her tormented life; she had felt obliged to lie a little, to ornament, and
