She hurried toward the end of the room, keeping so carefully out of the way of the dancers that she scraped the shoulder of her dress twice against the wall. Her dress would be marked from the wall, but that did not matter now. And after all, it turned out to be quite easy to make her way through the throng that was collected at the end of the room. None of them looked at her, and no one seemed to think that there was anything at all remarkable in her appearance, alone and hurrying as she was. She need never have feared that they would imagine she was trying to push herself upon them.

The big square hall was deserted, but someone had opened the front door to let the cold air in and Rose began to shiver as she ran up the stairs. It would serve them all right if she caught a bad cold. One blessing — the landing was deserted, and the bathroom door by the coat rack was open to show, in the wall inside, a square window of red and green glass. It would be very dark out. She turned to the big rack that was crowded with ladies’ coats and scarves and began to rummage for her raincoat. A sound from the long dim hall behind her made her turn, and she saw a girl in a bright blue uniform coming out of one of the rooms. It was Mary Lacey, who had gone to school with her.

“Oh, Mary,” Rose said, “I never saw you in your uniform before.”

“And you in your silks and satins,” Mary said, in a disagreeable tone, but her face was forlorn.

“Oh, Mary, I made it myself, every stitch,” Rose said, “and it’s only the cheapest velvet — nothing like as good as the curtains on the windows downstairs. I bet your uniform cost a lot more than this, Mary, and better made, too.”

“Oh, the same old Rose,” Mary said. “You haven’t changed a bit. I remember the day after your poor father’s funeral. You came to school, we were at our desks waiting for the nun to come in, and you said to me, ‘Oh, Mary,’ you said, ‘it was a lovely funeral, only for the coffin.’ ”

She opened her hand and they both looked at the key that lay there on her palm.

“I had to lock all the rooms up here earlier, before anybody got here,” she said. “She’s that afraid somebody might try to steal something from her. And then she told me to come from time to time and see if everything was all right. I don’t mind. I’m glad enough to get out of the kitchen. They left the door open between the kitchen and the pantry, and every time the dining-room door opened I kept looking along to see what I could see. I couldn’t help myself.”