As time passed and the girl did not return I realized my folly in allowing her to take the pitcher—even tepid water was more soothing to my inflamed face and eyes than the dry cloth. At last, giving up all expectation of getting ice until the return of Miss Stafford, I took my little tin pan and groped my way to the bathroom. Back in my room I found that I had barely a half-teacup of water—doubtless there was a rule against spilling water along the halls. Fortunately, I reasoned, the heat would soon dry it up. The house was profoundly still. If there was anybody in it they didn’t come to my hall. Several times I made the trip back and forth to the bathroom with my tin pan, each time realizing that the inflammation must be less because I could see a little better. It was a long day but I did not get hungry. When the women began to return from work I began nervously to wait for my friend. Being employed in the library of a down-town mortgage company, I knew their closing hour was not later than five-thirty. Time passed, but none of the footsteps passing so frequently along the hall stopped at my door. One woman’s voice called along the hall asking the time. Another answered that it was a few minutes before eight. Eight o’clock! Miss Stafford had not returned from her vacation and I was dependent on the night-watchman. He had told me that he made his first round at eleven o’clock, so I set about preparing for the three hours’ wait—to make my little pan of water last until he came. Now the inflammation had subsided sufficiently to make me keenly conscious of the difference between the duskiness of the halls during daylight and the glare under electric lights. One of the footfalls along the hall did stop at my door. There was a tap and my friend entered. “Why!” she exclaimed. “What makes you such a night-owl? I’m going to turn on the light.” Fortunately I spoke before she found the electric button. She was shocked on learning what was the matter, and how it had all happened, and even more shocked when I told her that I had moved in the previous Saturday afternoon and left a note for her with the clerk. She had returned from her vacation Saturday forenoon, had been in the Jane Leonard all Saturday afternoon, all Sunday except for the time spent lunching with a friend a few blocks away. She had returned from her office a few minutes before six that afternoon, got her mail and room-key at the office on her way to her room. Returned, handed in her key at the office, had her dinner, and then gone out for a walk. It was after this walk, when she stopped at the office for the key of her room, that my note was given her by the night-clerk. The only information vouchsafed to Miss Stafford and me by the woman to whom I had given the note was: “It was misplaced. I put it in 507 as soon as it turned up.” And the tone in which that statement was made was not in the slightest apologetic. Indeed it was impatient to the point of rudeness.