Hubert was angry and anxious. She had slipped away. He had lost her forever. He was sure of it. He had looked for her everywhere. He did not want to ask one of the girls to go up and find out if she was all right. He did not know Rose very well and he did not want to annoy her. And he did not want to ask anyone to go up anyway, for fear that she might not be up there at all. All these past nights it had been the same thing every night. Every night he had gone to her house to make sure she was still there and had not vanished, and every night, when she saw him to the door, she turned that face to him that said she was seeing him for the last time and did not care — that face of indifference and of downright cruelty. Because she knew very well why he came back, night after night, without being asked, and without any hope of being asked, apparently. She must have known why he continued to appear at her door, making a fool of himself, and not caring that he was making a fool of himself. And he didn’t care that he was making a fool of himself now, standing right out in the middle of the hall with her little handkerchief in his hand. He had begun his vigil by leaning carelessly over there against the open front door, with his hand and her handkerchief in his pocket, and a careless eye on the stairs, but his anxiety had got the better of him and he had moved near and nearer to the foot of the stairs until now it was all he could do to restrain himself from going up the stairs two at a time and calling out to her to come to him and stop her nonsense. But what if she wasn’t up there? She might have vanished, flown, slipped away home by herself. It was only to be expected. She would do whatever came into her head. She had no sense. She was like a child. She often appeared to him like a child who walks through a madhouse and is not afraid because she does not know the difference between inside and out. But she had every right to be afraid. Anything might happen to her. What if she had taken it into her head to go off home alone? He might never see her again, because she was as good as invisible with that mother of hers always there in the kitchen with them every night, always there and always talking.