"Come this way," said the nurse, "and sit a moment; do you feel a little dizzy?"
"A little," she answered, and her voice seemed to come from far away; "I am afraid that drink was stronger than it should have been ... if I could sit down ... the doctor...."
She knew that the nurse was helping her to a couch in a tiny room she had never been in before; she knew that she sank upon it and that the nurse settled her upon a bright crimson cushion; she heard her soothing murmur and nodded to show that she was not alarmed, only vexed at her own weakness, and then she ceased to struggle with the overwhelming drowsiness that oppressed her, and slept.
When she woke it was dark in the room. In the street the electric lights glowed, and the people passed steadily by the window; was it midnight, she wondered, or only early dusk? How strange that the doctor and the nurse had forgotten her!
"But, of course he would not have wished me waked," she said, and rose, straightened her dress, waited a moment, and then pulled impatiently at an old-fashioned bell-rope that hung by the door. There was no answer. Again she rang, but the house lay dark and silent. A little housemaid with brown, startled eyes, came at last, just as she was beginning to grow alarmed at the darkness and stillness, and stared at her.
"Was it you that rang, madam?" asked this little housemaid; "the doctor is out: he will not be back to-night."
"And the nurse?" she inquired, vexed at this lack of thought of her.
"The nurse has gone long ago, madam, for the night."
"How disgraceful!" she cried; "how unkind! To leave me here like this! What time is it, pray?"
"It is very late, madam; I could not tell you the hour."
The little housemaid yawned and pressed her tumbled cap straight.
She bit her lips to keep herself from angry tears and rushed through the heavy street door, down the stone steps, out upon the pavement. Angrily she sped along, brushing by the people, who, in turn, stumbled rudely against her. The jostling crowd brimmed her eyes; she walked as one in a mist.
"How cruel everyone is to me!" she whispered to herself and walked faster. Suddenly a thought came to her. Where was she going? Surely she ought not to attempt to walk all the way to her home, so late at night? She must call a carriage. She fumbled vaguely in the little bag at her wrist, but no purse was there; only a few small coins.