He looked at her a moment, seemed about to speak, thought better of it, and turned to Mrs. Gonner, who told Danny that he could have the front room as well if he wanted it; they moved along the passage to inspect this room, which was much larger and better lighted than the other and was pleasantly filled with the noise of traffic. Sylvia immediately declared that she preferred to be here.
"So I'm to have the rabbit-hutch," said Danny, laughing easily. "Trust a woman to have her own way! That's right, isn't it, Mrs. Gonner?"
Mrs. Gonner stared at Sylvia a moment, and murmured that she had long ago forgotten what she wanted, but that, anyway, for her one thing was the same as another, which Sylvia was very ready to believe.
When Mrs. Gonner had left the room, Danny told Sylvia that he must go and get a few things together from his flat in Shaftsbury Avenue, and asked if she would wait till he came back.
"Of course I'll wait," she told him. "Do you think I want to run away twice in one day?"
Danny still hesitated, and she wondered why he should expect her, who was so much used to being left alone, to mind waiting for him an hour or two.
"We might go to the Mo to-night," he suggested.
"The Middlesex," he explained. "It's a music-hall. Be a good girl while I'm out. I'll bring you back some chocolates."
He seemed anxious to retain her with the hint of pleasures that were in his power to confer; it made Sylvia impatient that he should rely on them rather than upon her capacity for knowing her own mind.
"I may be young," she said, "but I do know what I want. I'm not like that woman down-stairs."
"And you know how to make other people want, eh?" Danny muttered. He took a step forward, and Sylvia hoped he was not going to try to kiss her--she felt disinclined at this moment for a long explanation--but he went off, whistling.
For a long time Sylvia stood by the window, looking down at the traffic and the lights coming out one by one in the windows opposite. She hoped that Danny would not end like Monkley, and she determined to be prompt in checking the first signs of his doing so. Standing here in this room, that was now dark except for the faint transitory shadows upon the walls and ceiling of lighted vehicles below, Sylvia's thoughts went back to the time she had spent with Blanche. It seemed to her that then she had been wiser than she was now, for all the books she had read since; or was it that she was growing up and becoming an actress in scenes that formerly she had regarded with the secure aloofness of a child?