We were almost friendly by the end of the week. Each day I managed to lunch with her, and each day her suspicion of me lessened. Once or twice I noticed a small dark man near us, but it never occurred to me that my movements had any interest to the police. Then, on the last day, Miss Connor came through.

That was on Friday. I had met her for the three preceding days as if by accident, and it had become accepted that I sit at her table. She was no longer suspicious of me, but she was still on guard. That day, however, she was more at her ease. The long week was behind her, and Saturday and Sunday lay ahead. She became quite human and she herself brought up the subject of Marguerite Weston.

“We lived in the same boardinghouse,” she told me. “I’m still living there, for that matter. She wasn’t exactly pretty, but she had what it takes. I tried to warn her about Mr. Morgan, but she was off her head about him. So were half the girls in the office, but I saw through him from the first. He was the kind of man who’d have an affair with some woman and then carry home a dozen roses to his wife. He never fooled me.”

“I was a kid then,” I said. “Of course, lately I’ve heard a lot about it. I always thought she was beautiful.”

Miss Connor snorted. “I’ve got a snapshot of her. I’ll bring it in sometime.”

But I was getting too close to let her go. On the way out of the teashop I mentioned that I was looking for a room, not too expensive, and after a brief hesitation she said there was an empty room where she lived. I was feeling pretty shoddy by that time, but she asked me to go and see it. Something in her face touched me, and I realized that she was lonely. Anyhow, I went with her after work, and the inconspicuous little man went too, although I did not know it.

I have always been unhappy about that day; my own hypocrisy and what it did to her. Months later I got her a better position, as a sort of mute apology. But she never knew it. I saw her only once after that, and when I did she cut me dead.

The vacant room when I saw it made me shudder. After the Cloisters or even Miss Mattie’s it was dreadful, and Miss Connor’s statement that the Weston girl had lived in it made that escape of hers more understandable. There was a sagging bed, a chest of drawers with a mirror, a table beside the bed, and two chairs, one a rocker. The window opened on a court, and I stood there looking out. Marguerite must have stood there often, at first listlessly and then with a growing hope. A new life, a man who loved her. Europe. Paris. That small room could hardly have contained her happiness.