Nevertheless the fear she had experienced in the morning returned as she watched him go to the desk. In another minute it would be all over and everything would be all right. But now--what if someone saw them? Bumped into her accidentally. The lassitude which had filled her when she locked the tumbled hotel room behind her, gave way to a curious panic. Her tired nerves became unhappily alive.
She was unable to see the man for an instant. Her mind had darkened. "I mustn't faint," she murmured to herself. She was looking at an unshaven, dissipated face that smiled. As she looked her world seemed to be falling down. Everything gone--ruined. Because a face was smiling. Tom Ramsey. The man's name popped into her thought.
Schroder approached and frowned. He took her arm and led her away. She began to cry in the cab.
"He saw us. He knows. He'll tell everybody. Oh my God! Why did you come up when you saw him? If you'd only realized. Oh, why did I do it? Now everything's ruined. I'm lost."
She wept, knowing the futility of tears. An accident that seemed provokingly unreal and soothingly unimportant--Tom Ramsey. Yet the name was like a guillotine block on which her head lay stretched.
"Who was it? Listen, pull yourself together. People always imagine themselves guiltier looking than they are. He probably thought nothing wrong."
"Tom Ramsey. Didn't you see how he looked at me? Oh, God, I'm sick."
"He used to be my mother's friend. But he went to the dogs. He's just a tramp now. He isn't a gentleman."
"Oh well," he said, "there's no use worrying. Come, put it out of your head."
"I can't. Oh, I can't. Why did I do it. I'll kill myself if ... if anything happens. Aubrey will.... Oh Paul, I feel sick."
He stared glumly at the back of the chauffeur's head. A nuisance. A damned nuisance. His mind played with contrasts. A few hours ago she had been shameless. Now she sat weeping. He thought of her as ungrateful and grew angry.
"I'll step out now," he whispered. "Call me up tomorrow at the office, will you? Nothing will happen. Please, be calm. It's all imagination."
He halted the cab and stepped out with the suitcase. She would feel better, he knew, as soon as he disappeared. She would be able to convince herself then that nothing had happened--that she was coming home from a shopping tour.