Walking down Fifth Avenue, after buying tickets via Washington and New Orleans to Los Angeles, “Mrs. May” happened to see a poster advertising a recital by a violinist she had always contrived to miss.  At once she decided to go; and as it was for that night, there was just time to hurry back to the hotel, dine, and dress.  She was lucky enough to get a box, in which she sat hidden behind curtains, and the evening would have been a success if the carriage ordered to take her home had not been delayed by a slight accident.  She had to wait for it, and was much later than she had expected to be in getting back to the hotel.  Theatres were over; suppers were being eaten in the Louis Seize restaurant, into which Angela could see as she got into the lift; and upstairs shoes had already been put outside bedroom doors.  In front of the one next her own, she saw two pairs which made her smile a little, for, though she could not be certain, she fancied that she recognized them.  One pair was stout, unfashionable, made for country wear; the other looked several sizes smaller, glittered with the uncompromising newness of patent leather, and was ultra “smart” in shape.

“Poor statue!” she said to herself.  “If they’re his, how dreadfully the new ones must have hurt him!”

Then she went into her own room, where Kate presently came to undress her with affectionate if inexperienced hands.

Angela was still excited by all the events of the day, her first in her own country since childhood, and fancied that she would not be able to sleep.  But soon she forgot everything and lay dead to the world, very still, very white in the light that stole through the window, very beautiful, drowned in the waves of her hair.  Then, at last, she began to dream of Italy; that she was there; that she had never come away; and that there was no escape.  She moaned faintly in her sleep, and roused herself enough to know that she was dreaming; tried to wake and succeeded, breathing hard after her fight to conquer the dream.

“It’s not true!” she told herself, pressing her face caressingly against the pillow because it was an American pillow, not an Italian one in the Palazzo di Sereno, and because it made her feel safe.

So she lay for a minute or two, comforting herself with the thought that all bad and frightening things were left behind in the past, with a door, double-locked by a golden key, shut forever between it and her.  Nothing disagreeable could happen now.  And she was falling asleep once more, when a slight noise made her heart jump.  Then she and her heart both kept very still, for it seemed that the noise was in the room, not far from her bed.

It came again, and Angela realized that it was at one of the two windows, both of which were open.

At her request, Kate had pulled the dark blinds halfway up, and Angela would have laughed at the suggestion that a thief could creep into a room on the twelfth story.  Nevertheless, the night glow of the great city silhouetted the figure of a man black against the shining of the half-raised window-panes.  It was kneeling on the wide stone sill outside, and slowly, with infinite caution, was pushing the heavy window-sash up higher, so that it might be possible to crawl underneath and slip into the room.