"There is no way in which you can help me," she answered, and then she bade him good-bye, and, with what Browne felt sure was a little sob, vanished into the studio. For some moments he stood waiting where he was, overwhelmed by the suddenness of her exit, and hoping she might come out again; then, realising that she did not intend doing so, he turned on his heel and made his way back to the High Street, and so to Park Lane. His afternoon was a broken and restless one; he could not rid himself of the recollection of the girl's face, and he felt as sure as a man could well be that something was amiss. But how was he to help her? At any rate he was going to try.
The clocks in the neighbourhood were striking eleven next morning as he alighted from his hansom and approached the door of the studio. He rang the bell, but no answer rewarded him. He rang again, but with the same result.
Not being able to make any one hear, he returned to his cab and set off for the Warwick Road. Reaching the house, the number of which Katherine had given him, he ascended the steps and rang the bell. When the maid-servant answered his summons, he inquired for Miss Petrovitch.
"Miss Petrovitch?" said the girl, as if she were surprised. "She is not here, sir. She and Madame Bernstein left for Paris this morning."
When Browne heard the maid's news, his heart sank like lead. He could scarcely believe his ill-fortune. Only a moment before he had been comforting himself with the thought that he would soon be standing face to face with Katherine, ready to ask her a question which should decide the happiness of his life. Now his world seemed suddenly to have turned as black as midnight. Why had she left England so suddenly? What had taken her away? Could it have been something in connection with that mysterious business of Madame Bernstein's of which he had heard so much of late? Then another idea struck him. Perhaps it was the knowledge that she was leaving that had occasioned her unhappiness on the previous afternoon. The maid who had opened the door to him, and whose information had caused him such disappointment, was a typical specimen of the London boarding-house servant, and yet there was sufficient of the woman left in her to enable her to see that her news had proved a crushing blow to the man standing before her.
