And that was all I cared for. "Won't you take my arm?" I asked.
She did so in silence, and neither of us said anything worth recording
till I let her go first into the great hall of the hotel. It was
brilliantly lighted, and with a good many people lounging about.
"I could very well go up there without you," I suggested.
"I don't like to be left waiting in this place," she said in a low
voice.
"I will come too."
I led her straight to the lift then. At the top floor the attendant
directed us to the right: "End of the corridor."
The walls were white, the carpet red, electric lights blazed in
profusion, and the emptiness, the silence, the closed doors all alike
and numbered, made me think of the perfect order of some severely
luxurious model penitentiary on the solitary confinement principle. Up
there under the roof of that enormous pile for housing travellers
no sound of any kind reached us, the thick crimson felt muffled our
footsteps completely. We hastened on, not looking at each other till we
found ourselves before the very last door of that long passage. Then our
eyes met, and we stood thus for a moment lending ear to a faint murmur
of voices inside.
"I suppose this is it," I whispered unnecessarily. I saw Miss Haldin's
lips move without a sound, and after my sharp knock the murmur of voices
inside ceased.
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