At last, he knocked.

No response came.
He knocked again, and the sound of the diminutive knocker echoed prophetically amidst the stone walls; still there was no response.

His heart sank within him, and he leant against the iron hand-rail, gnawing at his lip with a keen disappointment, a blank dismay.

He tried to tell himself that her absence might be only temporary, that she would return: it was ridiculous to suppose that she should not go out sometimes, that she should be sitting there within the room, waiting for him: absolutely ridiculous! He lit a cigarette and waited on the merely improbable chance of her return; the minutes grew into half an hour before he realised that he might wait hours, and that it would be easy to inquire if she were still living there.

All the same, he lingered, as if he were loath to take his eyes from that door through which she had come to him as an angel of rescue--no, far better, as a pure, a brave woman.
Presently he heard the sound of slow footsteps ascending the stairs.
They paused on the floor beneath him, and Derrick, descending quickly, saw the thin, bent figure of an old man; he held a violin-case and a small parcel of grocery under his arm, and was on the point of unlocking the door immediately beneath that of the girl.