Chapter IV: Part 4

All the time my heart was beating very rapidly, and my blood was hot. Love, it seems, is like a fever. I never knew this before. I have always thought it a weakness when I have seen what men call love apparently devastating a life. Now I see that I must correct this judgment. For love is a force that operates beyond the jurisdiction of reason or will. I begin to think that I must expect less assistance from my own reason than heretofore.

That long, wild hour of my solitude somehow passed. It occurred to me to go outdoors. I picked up my hat and stick. Then, irresolute, I moved to the window and looked out over the city.

While I stood there Sir Robert came up the stairs. I heard his ponderous step, more hurried than usual, come along the corridor. There was a silence while, I knew, he was fumbling for his key. Then a jingling, and the sound of his door opening.

I think that an old man is the structure his younger self has built. How badly this man has built. Myself, often when tempted to do this or that, I have thought--“Will it make toward a sweet old age?”

He had talked to me cynically of love, had Sir Robert, only a few hours ago. What would he say now if he knew the immensity of the forces he had stirred and brought to the surface of my consciousness. I smiled as I thought that perhaps I owe much to that old man. I almost wanted to thank him.

So I stood there by the window, thinking many things. And the April air was sweet.

After a little time I started for my walk, my second walk this day under stress of great emotion. But in the course of the few hours intervening I had crossed a line. The man who was now about to step lightly down the stairs and stroll out through the shabby office of the hotel was a new man, one who had never before gone down those stairs or out through that office.

I lingered a moment by her door. I could hear her light step. And she was humming--oh, so softly! Humming another song by her favorite, Franz. It was the dainty, exquisite--=

```“Madchen mit dem roten Mündchen.”=

It seemed to me that there was a new brightness in her voice.

I slipped out into the corridor.

Sir Robert's door stood open. I stepped across and looked in. I had pushed my hat to the back of my head, to let the air cool my forehead. And I think I was swinging my stick.

From behind the closed door across the hall came, very faintly, that floating, silvery voice.

Sir Robert's room was in confusion. He had drawn his leather steamer trunk to the center of the room, opened it, and placed the tray across an arm-chair that stood by the head of the bed. The bed was covered with shirts, underwear, collars, books and papers in disorderly heaps. Shoes littered the floor. His evening clothes were laid out on the table, other suits across a chair.

On the edge of the bed, amid the disorder, sat Sir Robert. He was in his shirt sleeves. His waistcoat was unbuttoned, his white hair rumpled so that it stuck up grotesquely over his ears.

“Well, well,” said I. “Is n't this unexpected?” He looked up.

His face never had any color to speak of, but now it was a pasty gray. His eyes were sunken, but with a curious sparkle in them. He said nothing, just stared at me.

“Well,” I repeated, “are you leaving?”

Still he merely stared at me. It was unpleasant. I felt my assurance fading out, and stood stupidly there, unable to think of anything further to say. “He's here!” whispered Sir Robert then.

“Who--who--” My nerves were tightening. The left side of his face twitched.

I heard myself saying--“But that's impossible. He would n't be here yet.”

Sir Robert dropped his eyes now. I was glad of this. They made me extremely uncomfortable. He began packing his shirts in the tray of his trunk.

“How did he come here?” It was still myself speaking.

“Good God--how should I know!” he muttered. “What has that to do with it?”

“Where are you going?”

“I don't know,” he was answering me. “There are trains in the morning. And I won't stay here to-night. I won't stay here to-night!”

“Are you sure of this?” I asked. Why was it that my mind seemed to be refusing utterly to react from this news! Why could n't I realize it! Why could n't I think!

“He's at the Wagon-lits. I saw him. He is drinking. This is no place for you, either. I advise you to move quick.”

“No,” said I, “I shall see him. He and I got on very well. I shall talk with him. It is time some one forced him to listen to reason.”

Sir Robert, I recall, had a shoe in his hand at this moment. It fell to the floor. At the noise, we both started. His face twitched again--on the left side. He looked at me, with eyes like little glass beads.

“Why not?” I added.

Sir Robert drew in a long breath.

“Crocker told me he was going to kill that woman and the man she is living with,” he said, slowly and huskily.

“Yes,” I put in, with a sort of eagerness, “but don't you see--”

“It would be exceedingly difficult to convince a jury,” he went on, deliberately silencing me, “that she is not at present living with--”

“Well?” said I, thinking queer, rapid thoughts.

“You,” he finished.

_April 12th--very late._

|I WALKED slowly Lack into my own room, trying to think; but my mind was inert.

In the next room Heloise was still singing, softly and brightly.

I stepped out on the little balcony.

What was it Sir Robert had said? Oh, yes, that Crocker had come to Peking. This was dreadful. It meant trouble. One way or the other, I myself was involved in this trouble. A wife is, in a sense, the property of her husband--in a sense. If she dishonors his home by leaving him for another, he has some right to be indignant. If his outraged sense of possession lashes him into a murderous passion he can not be stopped from killing her. In England now--something about competent witnesses. And the difficulty of convincing a jury that she was not living with me....

In the confusion of mind that lay over my faculties like a paralysis, one curious fact sticks out in my memory. I deliberately shook myself, standing there on my balcony. I tried to shake myself awake.

I seemed to be recalling a story that the fat vaudeville manager from Cincinnati told on the ship, one night. It had to do with a celebrated prize fight in New York some years back. He reveled in memories of fights, that vaudeville man. An odd mental habit!

On the occasion he mentioned, one fighter was knocked down and very nearly, as the phrase runs, “out.” Lying there upon the floor of the ring, dazed, all but unconscious, the man actually beat his own head against the door in a desperate effort to rouse himself.

Over and over again that picture rose in my mind. I have never witnessed such a spectacle. Primitive brutality has played, needless to say, no part in my life. But at this time, caught up and whirled about, as I was, in a bewildering conflict of primitive emotions, it was a second-hand recollection of the prize ring that came to my aid.

The fact is not uninteresting.

I chanced to glance down. A tiny, lacy ball lay there at my feet. I picked it up. It was Heloise's handkerchief.

I held the absurdly small square of linen and lace in my two hands and looked at it. I folded and unfolded it. I pressed it to my lips, again and again.

Am I to become the helpless victim of these crude emotional uprushes--like any common clerk with his shopgirl? I, who have for so long observed the human herd from afar with a sort of casual interest?... I wonder.

Suddenly the thought of the man Crocker came to me. He was in this city. He was over there in the Legation Quarter, behind the walls that I could see--over in the big hotel. He was drinking again. And there was murder in his heart.

It seems to me that this thought--I am trying to face my strange, new self, and set everything down; God know's I need the discipline!--that this thought was followed by a little blaze of heroics. I am somewhat confused about this, of course--one can not analyze one's own emotions with any degree of accuracy while they are still active--but I recall going out into the hall and standing there like a sentry. I was determined to protect my lady with my life. I saw myself fighting gloriously for her; and I saw her, close at hand, witnessing my ever valiant act, and exulting in my prowess.

A child has such notions. And, I note, a lover.

I stood for a time at the top of the stairs. Crocker should never mount those stairs alive. Behind me, through the transom of number eighteen, there occasionally came floating clear little threads of tone. Heloise was singing as she moved about her room. She did not know. And she should not know--not yet. Perhaps I could find a way to spare her. At any rate, Crocker would never pass those stairs without fighting his way over my body.

Once I tiptoed back and tapped at Sir Robert's door; even tried the knob, but it was locked. He had gone, evidently.

I don't seem to know quite why I sought that old man again. It was an impulse. Perhaps I wanted him to see that his warning had had no effect on me, none whatever.

It was getting on into the early evening now, say between seven and eight. I half-saw one of the Chinese waiters come up the stairs with a tray for Heloise. I leaned against the wall when he passed. But for some reason it did not occur to me to order food for myself. I could not have eaten out there in the hall, anyway; and were I to sit in my room, even with the door open, there was a possibility that Crocker might rush by before I could stop him. So I ate nothing, all the evening. I could n't eat now, if food were brought to me. The reactions of what we call love are curiously related, it appears, to the various bodily appetites. I am almost ready to define love as a general disturbance of all the nerve centers, accompanied by strong, positive, emotional excitement and a partial paralysis of the reasoning faculty.

Some little time passed while I stood there at the head of the stairs. A fit of impatience, that may have had in it an element of morbid eagerness to hasten the event, took possession of me. After all, it was not essential that I should stand guard at that particular spot. I walked slowly down the stairs and, making a strong effort to appear unconcerned, through the office and out the door. He would have to come in this way.

I walked slowly along the narrow street toward the Italian _glacis_. It would be better, much better, to meet him out here.

There has been a chill in the air this evening. And the wind has risen, stirring up clouds of the powdery loess dust that is the curse of this wonderful old city.

For a long time I paced that street, breathing at times through my handkerchief in order to avoid the choking dust.

As the evening wore away, my resolution weakened. I began to see myself for the absurdity I unquestionably was--I the thin, nervous man of science, pitifully inexperienced in the ways of this sadly violent world, yet endeavoring to swell myself up (like the frog in the fable) into a creature fit to cope with that world. It _is_ absurd. I am not a violent man. I don't understand violence. There is no place for it in my philosophy, for my philosophy is based on fact and reason. There is no room for violence in an orderly world. Yet, under the pretense of civilization which is spread so plausibly over the surface of modern human life, I am confronted at every turn by the spirit of violence. And my own reason and sense of fact, in which I have so often sought sanctuary, have now failed me utterly.

Little by little my walks to and fro carried me farther into the broad open park that is called the _glacis_. That odd, morbid eagerness was drawing me steadily nearer and nearer the little foreign city within the Legation walls.

Finally I entered the Quarter. The great masonry walls fairly breathed of violence.

There is a sharp angle in this narrow road where it enters the Quarter, so constructed that the street can not be raked, from without, by shot and shell.

I passed under a sentry box on the wall, from which an armed soldier peered out at me--placed there because he might be needed to prevent or commit murder. For he and his like are but the trained agents of violence, masquerading behind a thin film of patriotism and what men still call glory.

Once within the walls I walked very rapidly. I was conscious that my whole body had tightened nervously, but I was powerless to relax. The blood was racing through my arteries and veins. I could feel that old throbbing at the back of my head. And my forehead was sweating so that I had to push my hat back. I carried my heavy walking stick--it had seemed that I might need it--and I was swinging it as I walked, gripping it so tightly by the middle that it all but hurt my hand.

There was no stopping me now. I went straight through to Legation Street, hurried along it, past the bank and the big German store, and turned off south toward the great hotel with its hundreds of bright lights and its noisy little swarm of rickshaw men on the curb.

I entered the wide hall that leads to the office and stood there, while my eyes searched about among the moving, chatting groups of people. There was a circle of tourists about the old Chinese conjuror who sat on his heels in a corner among his cloths and bowls and what not; I walked slowly around this circle, seeking the erect figure, the solid shoulders, and the drink-flushed face of Crocker.

I walked deliberately through the lounge, studying every solitary figure there among the easy chairs and the little tables and the potted shrubbery.

I went down the long corridor to the bar, and stood squarely on the threshold surveying the large room. There was a considerable number of men there--fifty or more, easily. The dress uniforms of half the armies of Europe flashed their gilt at me. All the tables were occupied, and there was a solid rank at the bar, behind which slab of mahogany the sober, silent Chinese waiters worked deftly at catering to the vics of these dignified gentlemen from the Christian West, now and then pausing to take in the scene with inscrutable, slanting eyes. There was much loud talk, some laughter, and, at one of the tables, a little quarreling.

Here, sure enough, was Crocker.

He sat in the corner across from the door and a little to the left. He was alone. A whisky bottle stood before him on the table, and a number of glasses. His face was very red. His big, usually vigorous body leaned limply against the wall. His head rolled slowly back and forth. There could be no doubt that he was very drunk. It seemed to me that he would have rolled to the floor had not his body been wedged in between the wall and the back of his chair.

I will admit that I was profoundly relieved. Nothing could be done to-night. Crocker could not act, or talk, or even listen.

Even now I feel that relief. Though I have observed Crocker closely enough to know that when he recovers from this debauch he will be dangerously unbalanced, I am glad of even a day's delay. He was in what he himself referred to as the “hangover” stage when he knocked down the waiter at Yokohama.

I may as well admit further--since this journal must be honest or else cease to exist--that this first sight of the man since Heloise entered my life and so vitally changed it was unexpectedly unsettling to me. Despite his condition at the moment, I felt again, looking at his shoulders and chest and arms and the outlines of his head, the primitive force of the man. And the expression of his face, now maudlin with drink, oddly recalled my memory of him as I had last seen him at the Yokohama station when there were tears on it. I had never before seen a man cry. I do not know that the possibility of such extreme emotion in a strong man had ever occurred to me.

He holds ideas regarding men, women and morality that are profoundly repellent to me, this crude yet not wholly unattractive man. He is permitting his life to be wrecked for these ideas--which at least indicates some sincerity. Heaven knows a man can't “own” a woman, or a woman “own” a man. Neither can possibly possess more of the other than that other is compelled by the power of love to give. There are no “rights” in love.

Yet--and this is the puzzling thing--when I was with Crocker, I liked him. And he liked me.

Savagely as he is mistreating his splendidly vigorous body, desperately as he is permitting his mind to become confused and brutalized, he is, even now, by no means a besotted man. I am not certain that he could properly be termed a drunkard. There is yet stuff in him. There is energy in him, that could be used. But in his stubborn purpose of destruction he is incidentally destroying himself.

What is this mystery of sex that it should enter a man's heart in the guise of love only to tear that heart to pieces?

Pale wanderings, these! And sad. For they tell me that in all the so-called practical affairs of life I am a weak person of confused mentality. There is bitterness in the thought.

I rather like that man. I think I feel a deep pity for him. And I am his mortal enemy. I can not understand it. But it is so.

I think I will give you up, you Journal that have so long been my companion in the rich solitude of my working life. For this life of mine is a working life no longer. It has turned off into the dark byways of passion. My purpose, hitherto compelling, falters now. My once clear mind is clouded and confused. I do not know when I shall work again. I do not know what I shall do. I only know that all is dark and still in the room next to this dingy room of mine, and that a sad, beautiful woman sleeps softly there. I only know that I love her beyond my strength, and yet that I seem unable to hate the man who would hate me if he knew.

It is only a little later--in the very early morning. I have reconsidered. I shall not yield to this weakness. After all, it may steady me to continue my old-time habit of writing everything down. Besides, it is clear that I shall have no sleep this night. It will be better to keep occupied at something.

It was my weakness for introspection, I think, that brought me to that state of bewilderment. I seem to get along better when I confine my narrative closely to the facts. I must resolve again, as I have resolved before, simply to tell what took place. Just tell it.

I turned away from the bar-room door. A number of men from one of the legations approached along the corridor. They were talking and laughing rather freely, and were all tall men, so that I neither heard nor saw the man behind them until after I had stepped aside and across the corridor to let them pass in to the bar. And the man behind followed them in without seeing me.

It was Sir Robert. He was in evening dress, of course, true to his British breeding. His monocle dangled against his shirt front. He was bowed a little. His hands shook perceptibly as he walked. And I observed that same new nervous twitching on the left side, of his face.

He stepped a little way into the room and looked about, as I had done. I waited. I did not seem to care whether he saw me or not, but felt no desire to invite conversation with him.

His eyes finally rested on the drunken man in the corner. His left eyelid drooped and drooped, as it always does when he is thinking intently. It seemed to me that he stood there for a long time, and that there was irresolution on his face. Myself, I could not take my eyes off him; it fascinated me to watch his drooping eyelid and the twitching corner of his mouth.

After a time he slowly turned and came out. He did not so much as know that I was there. He was studying the carpeted floor--thinking, thinking. I followed him.

He moved slowly out through the lounge to the street door, bowing coldly to certain of the individuals he passed. He went out, and down the steps.

The ragged rickshaw coolies pressed about him. He brushed them aside with his hand. For a moment he stood there, on the stone sidewalk. Once he turned, as if to reenter the hotel; but wavered, and stood still again.

I thought he saw me, waiting in the doorway, but believe now that he did not.

Finally he stepped up into a rickshaw, and waved his hand. His coolie picked up the shafts and set off on a run.

I hurried down the steps, leaped into the next rickshaw, and followed.

He went as directly as the streets permitted to our little _Hôtel de Chine._

So he was coming back!

I dismissed my rickshaw at the corner of the street and walked to the hotel.

He was not to be seen in office or lounge, so I went on up the stairs.

As I mounted, I heard voices. I stopped short when my eyes cleared the top step, and looked down the corridor.

Heloise's door was a little ajar. I could tell this by the rectangular shaft of light thrown from her room across the dim passage. Sir Robert had unlocked his own door, just across from it, and was standing with his hand on the knob, crouching a little, evidently listening to the conversation in her room.

I stood motionless.

One of the voices--that of a man--grew a little louder; but I was too far off, there on the stairs, to catch what he was saying. Then rather abruptly, the door swung open and the man backed out. He was the manager of the hotel.

At the same instant Sir Robert, with agility surprising in one of his age, darted into his own room and swiftly, but softly, swung the door nearly to behind him. The manager was too intent on his own words and thoughts to know of this.

I could not think what to do. The one thing I was sure of was that I did not want to speak to the manager, coming, as he was, directly from her room. So I ran down the stairs, and was in the lounge looking at a magazine when he appeared on the ground floor.

I waited a few moments longer, then went up again. I simply had to know what Sir Robert was about. And again I stopped when my head rose just above the top step.

Sure enough, there he was--that old man!--crouching by her door and tapping softly at it with his shaking fingers. I felt a slow, cold sort of dread creep across my mind and my nerves. I did not move.

He tapped and tapped--oh, so softly! He stooped to the keyhole and whispered. I could not hear him, but I could see it all in pantomime.

He gave this up; and stood thinking. He slipped into his own room and switched on the light, but did not close the door. In a very short time he reappeared with a white paper in his hand--an envelope, doubtless.

And for the second time I had to watch this monstrous old man get down on his shaking knees and with a pencil thrust his evil communication in under her door.

This done, he got to his feet (I could hear his heavy breathing), lingered only a moment, then returned to his room, leaving his door ajar.

I came on up the stairs then, walking as heavily as possible, and let myself into my own room here.

I kept silent for quite a time until I heard Sir Robert's door shut. Then I tapped on Heloise's door. Again and again I tapped there, but she would not reply. She is avoiding me, and that is disturbing. Her light went out soon after that.

On looking back, I see that I have spoken of her as sleeping. Since then I have thought, on two occasions, that I have heard her tiptoeing about her room; but for the most part it has been unusually still there. I have wondered if she is out on her balcony; but I dare not look. I shrink from it. For she is avoiding me. She would not answer my tapping on her door--the light, nervous tapping that she knows so well. And one thought stands out in all the dreadful, turbulent confusion of this hour. It is that I must not try to see her if she does not wish to see me.

It is just two o'clock.

I shall not sleep. I shall not even undress. This is not wise of me, I suppose. But it is the way I feel. And I am a creature of feeling now. It would help to pass these dreadful hours if I could go on writing--or if I could read. But she will know it if I do not put out my light. Perhaps she would worry.

So I shall sit here in the dark. Or walk to the window and look out at the sleeping city--at this rich old capital of a peaceful people, who smile languidly at the turbulent West from which I spring (like Crocker and his sorry kind)--who turn from the miseries of actual life to the philosophy of their ancient seers.

Though, come to think of it, I am wrong here. Even gentle, contemplative old China has been drawn from her slumber of the ages into the whirlpool of modern life. I was thinking of the past. I had forgotten. They are carving out a republic here now. Their hands are stained with blood. And the sometimes violent bankers of the Western world sit coldly over them while they struggle.

There is no peace. There is no clear thought. There is only life. Only life.

_April 14th._

|ALL the rest of that night of the 12th-13th I sat in my dark room, or softly walked the floor, or gazed out at the sleeping city fit un my one window. And all night I was conscious of unusual and increasingly violent nervous reactions. Turning the pages back, I note that I attempted the other day to write a definition of love. This was absurd. I do not know what love is. Nobody knows. It is a capricious and wild thing. It flashes like the lightning, and rushes like the wind. It grows by feeding on itself. It exalts. It devastates. It contains within itself all the latent possibilities of nobility and service, of lust and jealousy, of tenderness, of sacrifice, of murder. It is a blind, insistent force; yet it shines before the mind's eye like dewdrops on the gossamer wings of fairies.

When morning finally came, I stood there at my window and watched the sun climb slowly over the Legation walls. It was a flat red sun, hung behind a film of dusty air.

I wondered how long it would be before I should tap on Heloise's door. Not long. I feared. All night I had been waiting; all night I had been withholding my hand.

I heard her get up, and stir about her room. I wondered if she had slept. Perhaps, for she still did not know what I knew.

For a long, long time I waited.

Finally, at seven o'clock. I tiptoed across the creaking floor. I stood there by the door. I raised my hand, then dropped it. My throat became suddenly dry.

At length I tapped.

She had been stirring there, on the other side of the door. Now, at the sound, she was still.

I tapped again. And again.

She did not answer me.

I whispered her name. I spoke it louder.

This would not do. Sir Robert had tapped at her door. He too had whispered. She had not answered him. She would not now answer me. I turned away--hurt, bewildered.

I do not know how long I stood there, motionless, a little way from the door. I could not think clearly. And all the time it seemed to me that I must force myself to think.

After a time I deliberately went downstairs and ordered a light breakfast. But when it came I could not eat it. I could only nibble at a crust of toast and sip a little of the _café au lait_.

I went out into the air and walked about. It was absolutely necessary that I should steady myself. The day was big with evil possibilities. Crocker, if I could judge from my one previous experience with him, might be up and about by mid-afternoon. I must control myself. I must be calm. Crocker had a set purpose and a strong body. I, presumably, though weak in body, had a mind. I was the only obstacle between Crocker and his purpose.

It was just a quarter past nine when I turned back into the street that led to the _Hôtel de Chine_. The shops, with their highly colored displays and their quaint smells, were all buzzing with the rush of the morning trade. Coolies, merchants, purchasers and idlers of all ages jostled to and fro. Underfoot the children swarmed.

I was picking my way through this busy little thoroughfare, when, looking up, I saw Heloise step out of the hotel. She wore a veil that hid her face, from me. And then she was a hundred feet or so away. She turned in my direction. The street crowd closed in between us, and for a moment I lost sight of her.

I remember plunging crazily forward to meet her. Then I saw her again, and my heart stood still. For Sir Robert had followed her out of the hotel and caught up with her. She had stopped, and was listening to him.

He took her arm.

She withdrew her arm from his touch. But she made no effort to leave him. She was standing irresolute, I thought, listening to him. I plunged toward them again.

Then suddenly I stopped. For they were walking together now--right toward me. He was bending down over her. I could see that he was talking to her, very earnestly. And she was listening!

He reached out with his stick, as I watched, and brushed a group of coolies aside. He was protecting her.

I just stood there. I could not think out what I ought to do. I had meant to rescue her from him. But I could not do this against her wish. A moment more and they would be upon me.

Still I hesitated. Finally, really without any plan of action, I stepped up and into a Chinese shop and watched them as they walked slowly by.

He was talking--still talking--in a low, insistent voice. I could not hear what he was saying. And I could not quite make out her expression behind her veil.

When they were well past, I stepped out. I followed. For I had come to this.

At the _glacis_, they turned to the right, walking, oh, so slowly. And I, a miserable thing with nothing but ungovernable turbulence in my heart, dodged in and out among the street traffic, and shadowed them. I shadowed the woman I love.

They went--without thought or aim, apparently--around outside the wall of the Imperial City and toward the Chien Gate. At the western end of Legation Street they paused, and for a few minutes stood on the corner. He was talking, talking, talking. I saw him making eager, nervous gestures with his monocle between his fingers.

Then, slowly, they moved on toward the old stone ramp that leads up to the top of the Tartar Wall, just outside the compound of the American Legation.

I could not follow them here, for I should certainly be seen.

Heloise hesitated once, and it seemed to me that she meant to draw back. But after a moment she went on, and together they slowly mounted the incline.

I turned away. I tried to tell myself that there was no significance in this walk of theirs. Whatever it was he wished to say--up there on the broad summit of the Wall where they could walk and talk in quiet, removed from the turmoil of the city--certainly she had a right to listen if she chose. He had been annoying her persistently. She was not the sort to run away from anything. She was unafraid. Perhaps by facing him and hearing him out she would dispose of him once and for all.

But I did not succeed in imposing this attitude of mind on myself. And I am going to tell what followed. It marks the lowest point to which this strange new self of mine has sunk--as yet. It must be told.

I walked like mad the whole length of Legation Street--a mile. Perhaps I ran. I don't know. I rushed by the Wagon-lits Hotel with no more than a glance. I did not seem to care that Crocker was in there and might soon emerge. I did not seem to care about anything. I was all empty--life was laughing at me for all the years I had taken it so seriously and so hard. Yet, empty and purposeless as I felt, the forces that keep at me so, these days, were overwhelming me.

I went out through the German Gate saying--aloud--“What do I know about this woman? What is she to me? Who is she, that I should permit her to devastate my life!”

Some German soldiers heard me, and laughed.

There I stood, a thin little man, doubtless flushed and wild of eye, laying bare my poor tom heart to the world; and the soldiers were laughing at me.

I hurried away. An empty rickshaw was passing. I hailed it and leaped in. I rode straight to my little hotel. I ran up the stairs. I let myself into my room, and slammed the door shut behind me. I tore open the drawer of the bureau where I had carefully put away the ten cylinders on which Heloise and I had painstakingly recorded the close-interval scales.

I got them out, the ten boxes that I had labeled so carefully. I threw them on the bed in a heap. I stood over them. As nearly as I can recall it now, I laughed at them. For they were hers. She had made them. She had made them for me; and I had held her within my arms. The picture of her there on my balcony, came to me with poignant vividness. And another picture--Heloise, in her chair with her sewing in her lap, singing that difficult scale successfully for the first time, and trilling softly and triumphantly on the last note, while her eyes sought mine. It was all utterly bewildering. Suddenly, from laughing, I had to tight back the sobs that came.

It was then that I tore open the boxes, one by one, and threw the cylinders to the floor and stamped on them. They were merely a waxy composition, not hard to destroy. I did not stop until my floor was strewn with the pieces. And now no longer in there, anywhere in the world, a finely perfect close-interval scale as a standard basis of comparison for the tone-intervals of so-called primitive music. Von Stumbostel will never know of my triumph now. Nor Boag, nor Ramel, nor Fourmont, nor de Musseau, nor Sir Frederick Rhodes. That beastly little von Westfall, of Bonn, can snarl to his heart's content, unrefuted. And the British Museum will never see this great result that might well have crowned my work and my life.

All about the room were scattered the bits of broken cylinders. I stood among them, trying to think ahead. But I could n't think ahead. All I seemed to know was that I could stay no longer in this shabby little hostelry where my life had soared so high and sunk so low.

I cleared a space in the middle of the room with my foot, kicking the pieces of my once precious cylinders aside as if they were pebbles. I drew out my steamer trunk, and opened it; got my clothes from the wardrobe and threw them in heaps on the bed; jerked out bureau drawers and set them on chairs and on the floor where I could reach them.

I was still working furiously at my packing when she came in, alone. I heard her light, quick step in the hall, I heard her unlock her door, and enter her room. Then she locked it again, on the inside.

I stood there, coatless and collarless. I wanted to tap once more at her door. I hesitated over this thought. I resisted it. I fought with it.

Finally I put on my collar and coat, picked up my hat, and rushed out. I could finish the packing later. Certainly, I could n't finish it now, with every nerve tip quiveringly conscious of her nearness, there behind the thin partition and the shrunken door.

If I should find it too hard to come back later, I decided then, I would send a Chinese valet from the other hotel to finish the job for me.

Among the qualities that go to make up the unrest that we call love, it appears that self-absorption plays no small part. Perhaps this selfishness, lying at the root of desire, is the element of positive force in love. I wonder! Certainly, without it, love would be much more nearly a negative thing than it actually is.

It was very primitive, very confused, very petty, this outbreak of mine.

But then, life is that.

And I have destroyed my scales!

It was after eleven--in the morning--when I went away from the _Hôtel de Chine_.

I was angry, bitter. Nothing in the world seemed important except my own feelings.

I knew well enough what I was going to do. There were two or three other shabby little hotels outside the Quarter. But I was going straight to the Wagon-lits. It was twelve o'clock now. I decided to have my tiffin there. Then perhaps I would send a man around to finish my packing and fetch my luggage.

As I walked deliberately into the great, gay hotel, I was in spirit not unlike a man who has awakened from a turbulent dream. For here were the familiar folk of the West. On the preceding evening, when I had first entered this building, the same groups of tourists, business and military men, and diplomats, with their ladies, had been here; but then I had seen them with different eyes. Now they looked natural, as we say. And their voices fell on my ears with a pleasant reminder of home.

I found a chair in the lounge, and sat hack to watch the bright, chattering, shifting crowd. I glanced about for Crocker, of course, but saw no sign of him. A little later, just before tiffin, I looked up his box, at the desk. I wanted to ask about him, but feared that the clerk would think I wished to see him. God knows I did n't wish that! It was at this time, I think, that I began to realize the shadowy nature of the curious revulsion of feeling that I had been passing through, on this day. I did not feel so great relief as I had just been telling myself I was feeling. Those vivid mental pictures of Heloise, as I had seen her so often in her room or mine, kept flashing before me.... No, I didn't want to see Crocker. I did want to know where he was, and what he was doing. His box told me nothing. There were no letters in it; and his key was not there. But I had no doubt he was still in bed.

I ate my tiffin alone in the big dining-room, seated where I could watch the door. I fortified myself with the latest papers, and tried to believe that it would be pleasant to pass a leisurely hour or two there.

But I was restless. I did n't seem to want to read, now that I had my comfortable chair, and unusually good food. When the coffee came, I drank it at a gulp, and went out.

I stepped over to the desk to pay for my tiffin. I reached into my pocket for my purse. My fingers touched something filmy--Heloise's handkerchief! I could not resist bringing it out, there with the Belgian clerk looking coldly at me, and staring at it--that rumpled little ball o f linen and lace. This for a moment: then I paid my bill and walked away.

I went right out to the street. I had to stare again at the little handkerchief. I had to press it to my lips. The rickshaw coolies could see me; but I cared nothing for them, though the tears were crowding into my eyes.

I did not come to my senses all at once. I must have walked about until three o'clock or thereabouts. At least, it was twenty minutes past three when I found myself again in the street that leads from the Italian _glacis_ to our little _Hôtel de Chine_. I was humble now, and very sad.

For I had gone to pieces this day. I had failed the woman I love. In bitter, jealous anger I had failed her.

I had discovered in myself the meanest of qualities--suspicion. And utter selfishness.

A dozen times in those hours of my revulsion Crocker might have come to kill her--and I not at hand.

It was not until I entered the hotel and observed the sleepy quiet of the office and lounge that I was reassured. I could not bring myself to go upstairs, for she had made it so heartbreakingly plain that she would not see me. But surely all was well, as yet. Had there been trouble, there would be signs of it here.

I wondered if she had gone out for her customary afternoon walk. This thought bothered me. For then she would be coming back. I could not escape seeing her. Now, I wanted to see her, and I did not want to see her. I seemed to have reached a point, at last, where I knew that I would not go to pieces again. But this was only while I was reasonably sure that I could avoid her. If I were to meet her face to face, to look again into her great blue eyes with the long, long lashes, perhaps to clasp her hand, I knew that I could not be sure of anything. Once that magic were to surge again in my heart, my reason would fly.

Such were the facts of that strange revulsion which pointed out to me for the first time a pitiful flaw in my character. I failed Heloise when her need of me was most desperate. And nothing but luck (as we term it) saved her from the worst possible consequences of my weakness.

It was the first time in my life that I had been put to a rough, hard test. And--the flaw.

I deduce from this fact the conclusion that the sheltered life, with its corollary of so-called right living, permits no true demonstration of character. That fine quality is found in the open, where men (and women) breast the rough tide of life, and blunder, and struggle, and suffer.

I paced our little street, from the hotel entrance to the _glacis_, until twenty minutes of six. Heloise did not appear; so doubtless she was safe in her room. Crocker did not appear; so doubtless he was still drunk, over at the Wagon-lits.

I wondered a good deal about Sir Robert.

Finally he entered our street in a rickshaw. I stood squarely in the doorway of the hotel as he stepped down and paid off his coolie. He looked about him with quick, furtive glances as he crossed the walk. His eyes were tired, but heady and bright. There were spots of color on his cheeks.

He had to pass so near to me that he could have touched me. I was staring right at him, expectantly. I wanted to meet his eye, to make him meet mine.

But he cut me. It was the direct cut, such as only an Englishman can administer.

He went on into the building. I hesitated but a second, then turned abruptly and followed him.

He was at the desk, getting his mail.

I came to a stop behind him, and fingered a magazine that was on a table there. It was my intention to make him speak.

The manager came forward from an inner office, brushing his clerk aside. He said something--several sentences--in a low voice and with a hesitating, apologetic manner; then he handed Sir Robert a paper.

The old man adjusted his monocle, lifted the paper, and read it. Then, slowly, he crumpled it in his unsteady fingers and dropped it on the counter.

“You contemptible scoundrel!” he said, with one sharp glance at the manager.

“But it is that I do not want to turn out the lady--to the street,” the manager struggled to explain.

But Sir Robert walked away--into the lounge, where he beckoned a waiter and deliberately ordered his tea.

I stood there for a few moments, I think, quite motionless. Was it possible that--

It was Heloise's bill for two weeks.

I stepped up to the desk, and asked for the manager. He came out to me.

“I heard you speak of turning out a lady,” I said, looking straight at him. “What did you mean by that?”

He hesitated, then reached into his pocket and produced that identical crumpled ball of paper that Sir Robert had let fall on the counter. He spread it out, and smoothed down the wrinkles. “Perhaps,” he murmured, “I have make the mistake. It is too bad to think that the lady she can not--”

I snatched up the paper. It was Heloise's bill, for two weeks.

I paid him right then and there--in gold.

He muttered a jumble of apologies.

I cut him short. “You _have_ made a mistake,” I said. “Now have the kindness to keep your head shut, will you!”

He bowed himself back into his little den. I turned and found Sir Robert looking straight at me, from his chair. I must admit that his eyes never wavered. And there, for a long, tense moment we stared at each other like the enemies we were. Then I walked out to the doorway to resume my watch.

What a fox he was! Even in his desperate, terror-stricken pursuit of Heloise, he had deftly avoided entangling himself before an outsider. And he had extricated himself, as if by instinct, from the slightest financial risk in the matter. I knew then that this old man would give nothing save as a _quid pro quo_.

In a moment more I quite forgot him. I stood there in the little street, looking at the shopkeepers in their doorways sipping their bowls of tea after the rush and turmoil of the day. But I don't think I saw anything clearly; I remember some such scene, and know that I must have observed it at this time.

For the thought of Heloise, penniless in this sorry, shabby place, was almost more than I could endure. Though I had wondered, and even worried, about her finances, somehow I had not thought of her condition as utterly desperate.

I don't know what she would say--or think; for she would say little--if she knew that I had paid the account for her. Even yet, I have not told her. I have got to tell her, but I see that it is going to be difficult, I must think out some way of broaching the subject. Perhaps I shouldn't have done it. Or perhaps a more tactful man would have found some less crude way of managing it. I can't say as to this.

Standing there, I suddenly remembered that odd little scene of the preceding evening that I had witnessed from the stairway--the manager in her room talking to her, and Sir Robert outside, at his own door, listening.

He had known of this trouble. His knowledge of it had held him here to annoy her with skilfully aimed persistence. She had been unwilling to come to me. She had not known what to do. She had been helpless.

Oh, the thoughts that raced through my mind as I stood there in the doorway! And the pictures that my heated fancy contrived! I wanted to rush up those stairs and make her speak to me. It was all I could do to fight this impulse. I knew that I was going to do this, sooner or later; but I knew too that I could hold out a little longer. For I must not thrust myself, an ungoverned, passion-shaken man, into her trouble.

If Sir Robert had gone up, I am sure I would have followed him. But he did not. He sipped his tea for a long time, and nibbled his toast. I could look in through the doorway and see him. Then he tried to read. Then he wandered about the lounge, like a tortured ghost of passions that had died with his prime. Once he came to the hall and stood irresolute at the foot of the stairs, twisting his monocle in his shaking fingers.

But then he saw me standing there like a sentry. And he walked hurriedly back into the lounge.

So the time dragged on. When I looked again at my watch it was five minutes of eight. It was time for Sir Robert's dinner. Few things in life. I knew, were more Important to him. Perhaps he would go over to the Wagon-lits for it. Anyway, unless he had some definite knowledge of Crocker's whereabouts, he would not wait about here much longer, for he was a coward; his assurance had been undermined by the consciousness of his own guilty intentions. That much I had seen twenty-four hours and more earlier, when he warned me about Crocker.

But he did not go to the Wagon-lits. He went, instead, into the dingy dining-room of our own hotel. And I kept my watch, out there at the street door. A little later it occurred to me that I had seen no tray going up the stairs.

I stepped in and ordered the manager to send up a waiter to number eighteen. There seemed to be no use in holding back now. So far as that manager was concerned, I had crossed the line--both for myself and Heloise. And he, at least, would say nothing. His poor mind was already full of such unpleasant secrets as he imagined mine to be.

The waiter went up, and in a moment returned. The manager stepped out to me.

“The lady she does not answer to the waiter's knock,” said he, all concern and deference.

I could only bite my lip, and try to think, and then turn away from him.

Pretty soon Sir Robert came out from the dining-room, and made straight for the stairs. He was walking slowly and rather uncertainly. It seemed to me that he was a good deal bent. When he reached the hall, I observed that the spots of color had left his cheeks. His face, indeed, was pasty white.

I stepped inside and tried to make him face me. But he cut me again, magnificently. He reached for the railing, and slowly mounted the stairs.

Deliberately I followed. So we went up to the second floor--he fumbling along just ahead of me, I holding back.