I suppose
it must have been because I was tired and nervous after a whole night
without sleep that the shock I'd just received was too much for me.
Anyway, that kind glance made a lump rise in my throat, and the lump
forced tears into my eyes. I looked down instantly, so that she
shouldn't see them and think me an idiot, but I was afraid she did.
The young man who was taking me up to the top floor, and treating me
rather nonchalantly because I was a North Roomer and a Twelve Francer,
waved the lift boy aside to open the door himself for the lady; so that
I knew she must be considered a person worth conciliating.
Shut up in my ten-by-six-foot room, I tried to compose myself and make
plans; but to make plans on thirty-two francs, when you've no home, and
would be far from it even if you had one; when you've nobody to help
you, and wouldn't want to ask them if you had--is about as hard as to
play the piano brilliantly without ever having taken a lesson. With
Princess Boriskoff dead, with Pamela de Nesle sailing for New York
to-morrow morning, and no other intimate friends rich enough to do
anything for me, even if they were willing to help me fly in the face of
Providence and Madame Milvaine, it did seem (as Pamela herself would
say) as though I were rather "up against it.
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