But she would not wait to see whether any letters came for him----
Cold and stiff, at last she rose. Her feet were leaden, and she neither knew nor cared what anybody might think who saw her coming out into the street at that hour of the morning. She groped for the latch of the front door, and closed the door behind her. Ten minutes later she reached her own studio, dead-beat.
But there, too, somebody--the same somebody--awaited her. She had cast herself wearily into the low window-seat and was watching the sullen day-break over the river, when from behind the curtain that enscreened her bed there came a creak and a heavy sigh. For all her fatigue she sprang up as a skip-jack springs up when its piece of cobbler's wax yields. It _could_ only be one person.
She ran across the room and flung the curtain aside.
At the same moment Cosimo opened his eyes.
"Hullo! It's you. Wherever have you been?" he muttered.
"However did you get in here?" Amory demanded almost sharply.
"Put my hand through that stupid old door and slipped the latch, of course. You ought to get that door seen to, Amory; anybody could get in. But where on earth have you been all night? I came for my key, and then went to my place to see if you were there--went twice, in fact--but I thought you'd be coming in, so I waited and went to sleep. What time is it? By jove, it's cold."
Cosimo had lain down dressed on her bed, but his hair--this was the first thing Amory noticed about him--was less disarranged than it might have been. It no longer clung about his head in tendrils. He had had it cut quite short. But Amory did not comment upon the change. She had come to a sudden resolution. She did not intend to tell Cosimo that she had spent the night lying on his bed. So when presently he asked her again where she had been she assumed a brightness that, haggard as it was, was still a feat when her exhaustion was considered. She laughed.
"Oh, I've been out looking for subjects. I've found one--a ripper--Covent Garden Market. But oh, I'm _so_ tired!"
"But surely you haven't been there all night, my dear girl?" Cosimo expostulated.
"There and other places. Why not?... Do be an angel and light the fire, Cosimo."
And as Cosimo rose, stretched himself, and took off his coat, she stole a covert look at his cut hair again. It seemed to her to be not impossible that that might be an index of other changes also.
