She was unable to see the man for an instant. Her mind had darkened. "I mustn't faint," she murmured to herself. She was looking at an unshaven, dissipated face that smiled. As she looked her world seemed to be falling down. Everything gone--ruined. Because a face was smiling. Tom Ramsey. The man's name popped into her thought. "Hello," she muttered. Schroder approached and frowned. He took her arm and led her away. She began to cry in the cab. "He saw us. He knows. He'll tell everybody. Oh my God! Why did you come up when you saw him? If you'd only realized. Oh, why did I do it? Now everything's ruined. I'm lost." She wept, knowing the futility of tears. An accident that seemed provokingly unreal and soothingly unimportant--Tom Ramsey. Yet the name was like a guillotine block on which her head lay stretched. Schroder, annoyed, tried to console her. "Who was it? Listen, pull yourself together. People always imagine themselves guiltier looking than they are. He probably thought nothing wrong." "Tom Ramsey. Didn't you see how he looked at me? Oh, God, I'm sick." "Who is he?" "He used to be my mother's friend. But he went to the dogs. He's just a tramp now. He isn't a gentleman." Schroder sighed. "Oh well," he said, "there's no use worrying. Come, put it out of your head." "I can't. Oh, I can't. Why did I do it. I'll kill myself if ... if anything happens. Aubrey will.... Oh Paul, I feel sick." He stared glumly at the back of the chauffeur's head. A nuisance. A damned nuisance. His mind played with contrasts. A few hours ago she had been shameless. Now she sat weeping. He thought of her as ungrateful and grew angry. "I'll step out now," he whispered. "Call me up tomorrow at the office, will you? Nothing will happen. Please, be calm. It's all imagination." He halted the cab and stepped out with the suitcase. She would feel better, he knew, as soon as he disappeared. She would be able to convince herself then that nothing had happened--that she was coming home from a shopping tour. "Good-bye. Call me up, dearest." Fanny sat weeping as the cab moved away. Ramsey had seen her. A misery too heavy for thought brought another burst of tears. She hated Schroder. And herself, too. But most of all the ragged looking, unshaven Ramsey in the lobby. Why had he come at just that moment? If they had left the room ten minutes earlier. It was Paul's fault. He insisted on combing his hair, and reading a story in the newspaper. If he hadn't sent down for the newspaper in the middle of the afternoon. He didn't love her or he wouldn't have thought of sending for it. She had laughed at the time but it was an insult. He was a brute. If he had loved her he wouldn't have wanted to read a newspaper and they wouldn't have met Ramsey. She sat conjuring up dozens of trifling incidents which, had they occurred, would have prevented the fatal meeting with Ramsey.