Chapter V: Part 5

I stood behind him while he unlocked his door. But weak as he was physically, he never once let down in his attitude of ignoring my existence. I am not so certain that he is a coward. I _am_ certain only that the human creature is extremely complex, extremely difficult to classify and formulate.

He went in, and made an effort to shut the door in my face. But I caught it on my elbow, and followed him in, closing it behind me.

He sank into a chair, and looked up at me. Now, at last he had to speak.

“Well--” he asked, “what is it? Why do you come in here?”

I kept my voice well in hand. Heloise must not hear this.

“To ask you several questions,” I replied. “Where is Crocker?”

“At the Wagon-lits--still drunk.”

“You know this?”

“I saw him, only a few hours hack. Went to his room, in fact.”

He was speaking, I have realized since, with some physical effort; but his mind was steady enough. He seemed to be simply making the best of it, since he had been unable to keep me out by force.

“He is not likely to be up and about before the morning?” said I.

“He is certain not to. But they stopped selling him liquor this afternoon. I learned that from the manager. So he will be nervous to-morrow. And probably dangerous. Undoubtedly dangerous.” His eyes flitted about the room, and then I saw that his baggage, all packed excepting one bag, was still there. “So I will leave him to you. I take the Tientsin train early to-morrow. And alone, I regret to add.”

This stung, but I held myself in control.

“I had hopes that the lady would leave with me,” he added. “I would have done very well by her. Extravagantly well. For she is, I may say, a person of unusual charm. But now, of course, that you are openly paying her bills, I leave the field to you.”

I kept my hands close at my sides, and stood straight there before him.

“I gave you some advice the other day, my boy,” he continued. “Bear it in mind. The woman is helpless. I confess I don't see what on earth she can do. For she is a highly impractical little thing She has very little idea of the value of money. I offered more than I had any business to--offered to send her back to Europe and help her along with her studies. It seemed the only way to reach her, don't you know--the line of her ambition, and therefore her weakest point. I used all the familiar arguments. And God knows most of them are true enough--that private morality is of no consequence in an operatic career, that a woman need conform to suburban standards only if she is seeking a suburban success. I pointed out notorious episodes in the lives of great women performers whom we all admire, women of unquestioned position. But do you know, my boy, not one of these arguments appeared to reach her at all. She is to me, I must say, an extraordinary contradiction. Here she is, deserted and destitute on the China Coast, where a woman can not travel alone for a day without advertising herself as a marketable commodity; and yet, so far as I can see, she is, in a sense, a good woman. Really, it was n't until I pointed out the wreckage she was making of your life, and the service she could do you by accepting my money and getting away from you, that she would so much as listen to me--”

He looked up at me, and his voice trailed off into silence.

But I did nothing, except to say, in a voice that I knew to be my own because he was no longer speaking and there was certainly no other person in the room--

“So you talked of me!”

He bowed.

“You are frank, Sir Robert.”

He waved his hand. “Why not?” Then he went on. “The most puzzling point in her puzzling story is that part relating to the other man--the one that brought her out here. She makes no effort to justify her actions, as we expect a woman to do when she has gone wrong in the eyes of men.”

“Oh--so you asked her about that?”

“Yes.” He indulged in a wry, fleeting smile. “I brought up everything--used all my logic, Eckhart. I was, like you, a fool to want her at all with that crazy husband so close on her heels; but I did want her, and I worked hard for a few hours.” He sighed. “Do you know, all she has to say of the man with whom she traveled from New York clear to Peking, is--' That was a dreadful mistake. I was n't the sort of woman he thought me.' And when I spoke sympathetically of his cruelty in deserting her, she quietly informed me that he did nothing of the kind.... What do you say to that, my boy? _She left him!_”

He was quite warmed up to his story now. He even chuckled.

“What do you say to that, young man? This exceedingly attractive young person, very nearly penniless, quite unhampered by practical experience, turns the man off, refuses his money, and starts out to face life--in Peking--alone and without so much as a plan of action! It is pitiful, of course. It is tragic. But it does stir the fancy. Now, doesn't it?”

“I don't know,” I said slowly, “why I don't beat you to death.”

His face, I thought, grew even whiter. But his eyes met mine.

“I know why,” he replied deliberately. “Because a gentleman does not commonly enter the room of another gentleman for any such unmannerly purpose.”

I bowed a sort of assent to this. He really had me there.

“Besides, Eckhart,” he added, “while you have a perfect right to call me a fool, you certainly can't say that, as life runs, my attitude has been unnatural. The woman deliberately broke with life. As a result of her own acts, she is now outside the pale of decent society.”

“Outside--where we men are,” said I, very sad and bitter.

He sniffed, rather contemptuously. He thought my observation too obvious.

I added, as I turned toward the door--

“And at that, after your own tribute to the essential fineness of her character, your notion of 'decent society' sounds highly technical to me, Sir Robert. Good-by to you. You will forgive me for saying that I shall be very glad when you are gone.”

He did not reply. But as I laid my hand on the knob of the door, I caught a low exclamation behind me that seemed to have both pain and surprise in it.

I looked back. He had sunk down in his chair. One side of his face, the left side, had twitched upward so that there was a distinct slant to his mouth and an observably deep, curving line extending from the left lower corner of his nose.

“Are you ill?” I asked, after a moment.

He slowly shook his head. “Something snapped, I thought,” he replied, rather huskily. “But I am all here, evidently.”

“I shall be glad to call a doctor.”

“Thank you--it is quite unnecessary. If you will be so good as to have the manager send me a competent body servant, it will be sufficient.”

“But you may need medical attention.”

“Then it will not be difficult to reach McKenzie, over at the Legation. I won't trouble you further--beyond that matter of the servant.”

I bowed and went out, closing his door behind me.

I stood there for a moment in the hall. It seemed a very long time since I had seen Heloise or heard from her. And now, thanks to that old man, I had a new set of mental pictures to touch my spirit, and stir me, and rouse feelings so subtle, so haunting, so poignant, that I could hardly bear them. Yet, I thought, these are my new mental companions, these thoughts and feelings and partly distinct, partly elusive, mind pictures, and it is with them I have got to live for the rest of my life.

I listened. She was in there, surely, behind that closed door. The transom was closed, too. I could hear no sound.

I decided then to make her speak to me. And it seemed to me that now I could give without asking.

My hopes for myself were running as high as that--to give without asking, and to reassure her poor tortured spirit by so appearing and acting that she would know, through her fine intuition, that I had risen to this point.

I ran downstairs and told the manager of Sir Robert's request. I also suggested that in my judgment medical care was indicated. He looked puzzled, and a thought worried, that little French manager; as if unable to determine whether I had killed Sir Robert or had suddenly become his friend.

Then I came back upstairs and entered my own room. I turned on the light.

I stepped softly to the shrunken door, and listened. For a moment I thought I heard nothing; then my heart gave a leap, for her bed began creaking as if she were tossing restlessly upon it.

She was in her room. However desperate, however tortured of spirit, she was there!

She made a sound--a sort of moan.

I tapped on the door.

She was silent.

I opened the door an inch. Her room was dark. Without looking in, I placed my mouth close to the opening, and said--

“Oh--Heloise!”

That was all. I had thought to conceal my own emotions. I had thought to speak gently, kindly--in a way that would make her feel me there as a steady, helpful friend. But my voice suddenly choked. And all I could say was, “Oh--Heloise!”

She did not reply.

I waited there. I felt that I must not intrude. I could not think just what would be best to do.

Then she tossed again, restlessly. And she moaned, with a sort of muffled shudder in her voice, as if she had set her teeth and was fighting with all her waning strength to keep from making a sound.

I could n't stand it. I opened the door. The light from my room fell across her bed and showed her there, her lovely arms outside the coverlet, her dark hair, in a thick, long braid, lying on the pillow and across her shoulder.

Still she did not' speak. I entered (thinking vividly of that first time that I had ventured unasked into this dingy little room that was the only place in the world she could call, even momentarily, her own ). I went straight to the bed. I took one unresisting hand in mine, and gazed down at her during the moment that my eyes were accustoming themselves to this dimmer light.

She rolled her head weakly around on the pillow, and looked up at me.

Then I saw that she was very white. Her eyes were shining at me out of great, dark circles. There were marks of pain, of physical suffering, on her dear face, such as I had never before seen there. Hitherto she had merely been sad.

I sank down, sitting on the edge of the bed. I could not say anything. I stroked her wrists. I gently smoothed her forehead and temples and cheeks. Her skin was cool, almost cold, to the touch.

Her great eyes sought mine. Weak and ill as she was, I knew that she was looking into my soul, and studying it, perhaps wondering about it.

At least, now, there would be no more evasion between us. I felt that. Whatever she might say to me, when she should feel able to talk, would come directly from the most sacred depths of her consciousness. We had never been so close. Even at that sad moment, the thought thrilled me.

I had to turn away.

Then I saw that her bureau, over which she and I had once expended, ages ago, an absurd amount of energy, had been moved, and stood squarely across the hall door.

Now, why had she done that?

I was still stroking her forehead and temples, trying to control the fever that was in my veins, trying to think clearly.

I looked again at her.

She made an effort to smile at me. There was infinite sadness in that effort.

Suddenly she turned toward me, on her side, hiding her face from me, pillowing it on my hands, which she held close, if weakly, with her own cold hands. And again that low, pitiful sound escaped her lips.

“I wanted to die,” she breathed. “I wanted to die! Why did n't you let me die!”

My heart stood still.

I turned her face to mine, and bent low over her.

“What have you done?” I asked her.

She shook her head, almost convulsively, and tried to hide her face again.

“What, have you done?” I asked.

I looked more closely at the bureau, dreading what I might see upon it. But there were only the famihar little toilet accessories that I had seen there before. My eyes searched about among them, while I sat there on the bed, while she continued to press my hands, with her own cold ones, against her face.

Then I looked down. On the floor, almost at my feet, was a glass with a little water in it. Near by was a small brown medicine bottle, with beaded edges. The cork was out. A little cotton lay by it.

I picked up the bottle, and turned it over.

It was labeled:

“Poison.” And beneath this, “Morphia,

“Heloise!” I cried. I made her look at me. “Heloise, child! You don't mean--you have n't--”

Her head moved between my hands; and I knew she was trying to nod an affirmation. Then she struggled again to turn her face from me, but so weakly that I held it there without much difficulty. I fear I was employing more strength than I realized.

“How much did you take?” I said. “Tell me--quickly.”

“I don't know,” she whispered. “The bottle was full. I took them all.”

“That is impossible,” I argued, foolishly. “Two grains would have killed you. One grain, even.”

“I took them all,” she repeated. “I wanted so to die. I thought for a while that I was dying. Then I became dreadfully ill. I have been so ill, Anthony!”

All at once a note of relief had come into her voice--as if it meant something to her, after all, to have me there with her, and to be able to talk with me.

I felt that. But it was not the time to think of myself.

I stood up. But she clung to one of my hands, and I had to bend a little. I was trying to think--What do they give for morphine poisoning? What are the antidotes?... Stimulants, surely.

I had some strychnine in my little medicine-chest. I gently withdrew my hand, and went into my room to look for it.

I felt uncertain about this treatment, for I am no physician. But it might be that there was no time to lose. She was weak, and extremely nervous. The coldness of her hands led me to believe that at some moment after she took the drug her heart action must have all but stopped.

Standing there, in my disordered room--for my steamer trunk was open, my clothes still lay in rumpled heaps on the bed, the cluttered bureau drawers stood about on chairs and on the table--I made up my mind to give her the strychnine. I did not realize then that there were physicians to be had. I felt only our remoteness from the conveniences of civilized life, here in this little hotel in the Tartar City.

It would doubtless have been better to administer the stimulant by the hypodermic syringe. But I had none. So I refilled her glass with water, gave her two of my strychnine pills, and raised her head while she sipped the water.

I do not recall now whether or not she resisted this treatment. I think she did, a little. But she was so completely exhausted, in body and spirit, by all she had gone through, that she really could do nothing but follow my instructions.

Then I rang for a boy--from my own room. It was getting pretty late in the evening; but I made him fetch me a large pot of black coffee.

I lifted her, and slipped the two pillows behind her that I had brought in from my own bed, and made her as nearly comfortable as I could. When the coffee came I poured out three cups of it, one after another, and stood over her while she drank them. She protested, every moment, but I paid no attention to her words, just held the cup to her lips until it was empty and then refilled it twice.

This done, I put the tray in my own room, and did what little I could to make her room more attractive to the eye. I moved the bureau from the hall door to its place against the side wall, the place it had occupied ever since she and I had moved it for the last time away from the door that connected our rooms. I even straightened out the various articles on the bureau.

And all this time I felt her great, weary eyes following me about, the room. She was distinctly relieved, I thought, at the sharp way in which I had taken command of her life. Poor child, she had tried hard enough to end that life. She had passed through the valley, of the shadow. And now, cheated yet relieved, she leaned on me.

Since that hour my mind has dwelt on the horrors she must have lived through that day. (She did not finally take the morphia until sometime after five in the afternoon.) She says nothing about the day; and of course I ask no questions. But she was there in her room through the noon hours and all the afternoon. And when I asked her if she slept at all the preceding night--the night that I sat up, without even undressing--she said no.... But I think it is better for me not to dwell on this.

I walked over to the window to let the night air in on her, and perhaps also to think.

Suddenly I recalled that there was a telephone downstairs. How stupid of me not to have thought of it before!

And Sir Robert had spoken of a physician at the British Legation. I should have remembered that! But on second thought, I could not bear to think of calling in Sir Robert's man.

However, medical advice of some sort I must have. I knew nothing of the action of morphia on the system. She might be sinking at this moment.

I stepped back to the bedside and stood over her.

She did not look worse to me. It might have been only the temporary effect of the strychnine and coffee, but there certainly appeared to be a hint of color in her cheeks.

“I am going downstairs to telephone for a doctor,” I said, taking her hand. Her fingers twined weakly around mine, and clung a little. “Will you lie quietly here until I come back?”

“I don't want a doctor,” she breathed. “I'm much better.”

I paid no attention to this. “And will you promise me never to--not to”--my voice was unsteady--“not to take any more of that dreadful stuff?”

“I could n't,” she replied, in that maddeningly unsatisfactory way of answering serious questions that women appear to have. “There is n't any more.”

I think I compressed my lips over this. But I went right downstairs.

The manager was in his little den behind the hotel office. I beckoned him out, and asked about physicians.

His eyes sought my face. But I told him nothing.

With his assistance--for the telephone service of Peking is not that of New York or Chicago--

I called up an English medical mission that was not far from the hotel.

The head physician had gone to bed. At first they refused to disturb him. But I insisted.

It was half an hour before he arrived. I drew a chair to Heloise's bedside, talking with her and rubbing her head and her forearms while we waited.

She gave every evidence of rather rapid improvement. She was weak, of course; and so nervous that her body would twitch for no reason, and the slightest unexpected sound would give her a start. But the pupils of her eyes, that had been very small, were widening out to something like their normal size. And behind the gaze that she kept turning to me and the occasional faint suggestion about her mouth of a gentle but sad and enigmatic smile, I felt, even then, that she was doing some sober thinking.

After a time she said:

“I have clung to one thought to-day. My life has been all a blunder. But it has helped a little to know that you have your scales, Anthony--and that you would n't have them except for me.”

I went limp at this. For it had made me feel sound and strong to be caring for her, and now her words plunged me back into the depths of that dreadful day. I dropped my chin on my hands.

“Anthony!” said she. “What is it?”

I could only shake my head.

“But you have the scales, Anthony?”

I shook my head again.

She came up on her elbow--all weak and shaking. She had on that gray silk kimono that I love--the one with the wistaria blossoms embroidered on it. I felt her eyes searching my thoughts, and I could only look at the soft gray blossoms on her sleeve and study out the pattern.

“Anthony,” she was saying, with something of that musical “edge” in her voice--“Anthony, what have you done?”

I told her. I even moved my chair aside and let her gaze past me and through the open doorway into my room, where she could see bits of the broken cylinders scattered about the floor.

Was I pleading the cause of my love for her, of my--yes--of my desire for her, in thus giving way to the unexpected impulse to have her see those broken cylinders with her own eyes? God pity me, I do not know! All I am sure of is that I suddenly wanted her to know all about those miserable, weak hours of mine. And a strange, tremulous hope was fluttering to life in my heart. It was possible that we should again work together, she and I!

This hope fluttered and grew. I felt my heart beat more quickly, and a touch of that odd dryness in the throat that comes to me when Heloise and I are close, when I touch her hand or her sleeve and know at the same moment that she is thinking of me and that her feelings are in some mysterious way interwoven with mine.

I recall that I moved forward on my chair I moved still farther, and sat on the edge of the bed. I slipped my arm behind her head. I drew her lovely, dark head against my breast. I bent over and kissed her fragrant hair and rubbed my cheek against it.

I was stroking her hair and her soft cheek. I bent lower and kissed her forehead. Then I kissed her cheek.

I could not help it. I did not know I was going to do it. I know now that she had stopped resisting before this. She let me kiss her.

Slowly this fact made itself felt in my mind and in my heart. She had let me kiss her, but she had been unable to respond. And I remembered what she had said, hours or years ago, and the poignant sadness of it--

“Something has died in me. I don't believe I can ever love a man again.”

I lowered her head against the pile of pillows. I held the thick braid of her hair for a moment, then let it fall over her shoulder. I looked into her eyes, hoping against hope that I might find a responsive light there.

Then I sank back on my chair, and covered my face with my hands.

She reached out and laid her hand on my arm.

For a little time we sat that way. I could not look at her. I could not say anything. I was glad of the gentle touch of her hand.

It was she who broke the silence.

“Oh, Anthony,” she breathed. “If I only could!”

Then we were still again.

But this would not do. I was all egotism--I, who had so wished to help her.

Finally I looked up, and took her hand in mine and stroked it. I even smiled at her. At least, it seemed to me that I smiled.

It was one of those moments that come, in our times of greatest bewilderment, when for a space we see clearly. I suddenly felt that I could think again.

“I don't know what is to become of us, Heloise dear,” I said. “You have been close to the end of your life. But I think that you will have to let me help you. For I know now that I shall not want to live unless I can help you. And I shall not leave you alone in Peking. I think you will have to bear with me, at least until I can know that you have got back into the current of your life and work.”

She compressed her lips, and her dear eyes glistened. Then I felt her fingers tighten around mine.

“Anthony,” she said, low and uncertain, “I would do anything. I would love you if I could. I would go to you without love if I thought I could make you happy, or even help you. You gave me hope by helping me to work. Now, in spite of the dreadful facts of my life that I know so well to be true, you are stirring me to hope again. But all the time I know that the dreadful facts are there, that they will be there when this hope is faded.”

“I think,” said I, “that we can triumph over those dreadful facts.”

“Oh, Anthony,” she murmured, “if you only knew how dreadful they are. I wondered before whether I ought to tell you. I lay awake here night after night, trying to think it out--whether I ought to tell you. And then even worse news came. It was too much for me. I gave up, Anthony. It seemed to me, only a few hours ago, that the kindest thing I could do--the kindest thing I could do to you, dear--would be to leave this world. I brought only trouble into it. I thought it would be best to leave it.”

She paused. She looked past me, toward the window. Her brows were knit. She was very sober. And her reticence, that I had always felt, was gone. She continued:

“And now I've made a failure even of that. And here I am again, disturbing your life, a burden--”

I leaned forward and took her other hand and looked at her. She faltered. She stopped. I held her two hands firmly. For a moment I considered telling her that I knew her story. Then I knew that I could n't tell her. To-morrow, perhaps; but not now. This hour was hers and mine. Crocker had no place in it. I would not so much as have his name spoken. Further than this, my mind, that had failed me so miserably of late, was working again; and a plan was forming there.

I could not yet see all the way. But from moment to moment I could feel my habitual confidence in my mental processes coming back to me. I was beginning to believe, as I always used to believe, that I should prove equal to the situation, as it might develop. And the first thought of renunciation was coming to me like a clear light.

It is obvious, of course (even in this tense moment the fact became reasonably clear to me) that where personal desire is the major premise, logic is impossible.

It was time I came; in some degree to my senses.

She must have seen something of all this in my face, when I bent forward and took her two hands so firmly and looked into her eyes.

“Heloise dear,” I said, “you are not going to die. You are going to live. For the present you are going to let me help you start at rebuilding your life. You will do this because I love you, and because it is unthinkable that I should not help you. One way or the other”--I repeated this phrase with a peculiar emphasis that, I could see, puzzled her--“one way or the other I am going to help you. It may be that I can never stir you to love me. I shall do this if I can, Heloise; but it may be that I shall not succeed. I am glad that I have”--my voice broke here, so confusing is love--“have kissed you, but I shall not kiss you again. Not again, dear. We shall work this out, however. You and I, one way or the other, we shall work it out.”

“But Anthony,” said she. “You must let me tell you! It is--I am not free--there is--”

“You shall not tell me to-night,” I said to her. “You shall tell me nothing. I will not permit it. I will not listen. Free or bound, however dreadful the facts may seem--these things are nothing. Nothing!” My voice rose a little, I fear, at this point. “They can not possibly concern us now, you and me. For one way or the other--”

“But, dear, you don't understand--you don't know!”

“I know enough,” said I. “I know all that need concern me and the woman I love more than my life, more than my work, more than everything else in the world and the sky.”

She seemed almost to shudder at this.

“Anthony! Please, dear!” She was whispering these broken sentences. “This is all wrong! Please!”

Her voice trailed off. I was still bending forward, all eager and flushed with the great thoughts that were stirring within me. Her eyes seemed almost to cling to mine. She stirred a little, but did not turn away. Her hands were still in mine.

It seemed to me that I ought to surrender her hands and sit back in my chair.

Her eyes were glistening wet, the outlines of her mouth softened from the sadness that had been there. It almost seemed to me that she was drawing me forward with her hands.

Certainly something--some quality of the spirit, perhaps, was draw ing me nearer and nearer to her. I knew that my head was bending closer. I thought of resisting, but I did not resist.

My lips met hers.

Her hands slipped out of mine, and slowly--oh, so slowly!--slid up on my shoulders.

Then her arms were about me, and my arms were about her; and our hearts were beating together, very fast.

“Listen!” she whispered, all breathless, turning her head.

Some one was knocking at my door.

I stood up, irresolute. I was bewildered. She looked wan and weak, lying back there against the pillows. I was choking back the sobs that nearly came.

“Oh, Heloise,” I managed to say. “I meant not to. Forgive me, dear!”

But she was not looking at me. “See who it is,” was all she said.

So I went through to my own room, closing the connecting door behind me. I hurriedly brushed my hair, then opened the door.

It was the physician from the English mission. He was a young man, who looked at me coolly and with some curiosity.

I told him what had happened.

He weighed the morphine bottle in his hand, and pursed his lips over it.

“She must have taken between ten and twenty grains of the stuff,” said he, musingly.

“That, of course, is incredible,” said I.

He shook his head and replied in a casual tone for which I hated him.

“Oh, no. An overdose will act that way with some people. The system simply refuses to assimilate it or even retain it.”

I reported to him what I had done. He then went in and looked at Heloise and asked a few questions.

Occasionally his eyes flitted about the shabby room. Then he would dart little glances at her and at me.

He was a depressing person, this young physician. It was clear enough the impression he got of us.

Heloise felt it keenly. I saw that little droop of sadness coming about her mouth.

Then he told me that I had done about everything he could have done, that she would be all right in a day or so, and that she had had a rather lucky escape.

He left a little medicine, and went away. We both felt that he did not care to have us call him again; and we each knew that the other felt this, though we did not put it in words.

Finally I said, after I had sat by her for a time in moody silence--

“It is very late, dear. I rather think you will sleep to-night, in spite of the coffee and all.”

“Yes,” she said, “I think I will. And you, Anthony”--she caught my hand--“I don't like to see you look so tired.”

“I shall sleep,” I replied. Then I kissed her forehead, and went into my own room, leaving the door ajar in order that I might hear if she called.

We did sleep, both of us. At least, she says she did. And she looked rested this morning, when I took the breakfast tray from the waiter and carried it to her. She was up, and dressed.

I have realized since that I did not succeed at all in my efforts to hide the serious mood that took possession of me from the moment I woke. She caught it. Every now and then she flashed an odd, puzzled glance at me.

Finally, when we had finished and I had put the tray in my room, she broached the subject that was uppermost in both our minds.

“Before we go any farther, Anthony dear, I am going to tell you--”

I stopped her.

“But Anthony, you must let me speak. You are giving up everything for me, and you don't even know--”

“I know all I wish to know now, dear.”

“But this is very important. I can't forgive myself, when I realize that you don't know what I have done--”

I could n't stand this. I simply took her two shoulders in my hands and made her look squarely at me; and I spoke with a sudden uprush of feeling.

“Dear, dear girl,” I said, “I'm not interested in what you have done. I am interested in what you are.”

“But Anthony, if I am not worthy--”

It hurt me to hear her speak in this way. I was thinking swiftly, bitterly, of certain episodes in my own life. I was thinking of the men I knew, and what they had done. I thought of Crocker and his outrageous code. I thought of my own latest episode of the sort--with the little girl at “Number Nine”--and of the queer masculine twist in my own thinking that had led me to consider myself “unmanly” because I had run away from that girl when she wanted me to stay.

No, I could not bear to have her speak or even think so of herself. So I said, still holding her there before me:

“Men are accustomed to judge women, Heloise. You say that I must know what you have done. Has it occurred to you that I ought to tell you--very humbly, dear--what _I_ have done?”

She looked really puzzled at this.

“Why,” she said, “I don't know--I never thought. T have always heard that men were--well, different.”

“You have heard that--from men,” I replied sadly, and turned away.

She caught my arm. “But apart from all that, Anthony,” she broke out, “there is one thing that you _must_ let me say. You _must!_” She hesitated, caught her breath, then plunged desperately along with it. She was not looking at me now. Her color was rising; and her voice low.

“I have--a--husband--” she said.

“Yes.” I interrupted her. “I am going to talk to him now.”

I went straight into my own room and got my hat and stick.

She followed me as far as the doorway. I saw her leaning there, all limp and white.

“You knew!” she was murmuring, as if to herself. “You _knew!_”

“I don't believe I shall need my overcoat,” said I, glancing out at the sunlight on the roofs. God knows why I said just that at such a moment. I added--

“Wait here, Heloise. It will be all right. But the time has come to stop drifting. We are going to stop drifting now, you and I--and he. Good-by, dear, for now.”

I knew I must hurry. I simply could not talk this out with her now. I felt that I could not endure it. I doubted if she could. Besides it would get us nowhere so long as the question of Crocker himself should be left unsettled to menace our two lives.

I opened the door.

She came on into the room, reaching her hands out toward me. She seemed actually weak, trembling.

“Oh--Anthony!” she breathed, staring at me with something that was almost fascination in her eyes, as if she were now seeing me for the first time.

I could not trust myself at all. I hurried out, closing the door behind me. I ran down the stairs.

It was the thought of the telephone that had come to me with such force on the preceding evening. I knew now that it was not necessary to keep up this terrible waiting for him. It would be easy enough to call him up; then I could go to him and still feel that I was not leaving Heloise at the mercy of a chance visit from him while I was away.

It took a long time for them to get him to the telephone, over there at the _Wagon-lits_--fifteen or twenty minutes, I should say.

Finally I heard his voice.

“How are you, Eckhart?” he said, in the easy, offhand way that men employ one with another. “How have you been?”

I thanked God, under my breath, that he was in condition to talk. I simply could not have endured further delay.

“I've been all right,” said I. “I want to see you, Crocker, in regard to a very important matter.”

“Surely. Any time you say.”

“Suppose I come right over there to the Wagon-lits.”

“All right. I'll wait for you in my room. Good-by.”

“Good-by, Crocker.”

Then I went out into the little Chinese street, and once again headed toward the big hotel in the Legation Quarter.

April 14, (continued).

|CROCKER opened his door at my knock.

He was half dressed, with a quilted gown drawn about his big frame.

He gripped my hand. I permitted this, which was perhaps an odd thing to do; but it came about so easily and swiftly that I could not think how to prevent it without appearing merely childish.

Then I went on into the room, and stood, with some sense of inner tension, while he drew an easy chair to the table and with a paper cutter pried open a box of cigars.

He has changed, even in the fortnight since our parting in the railway station at Yokohama. He is putting on weight pretty rapidly, and his face distinctly exhibits the ravages of drink. It was pale this morning. His eyeballs were crisscrossed with red veins, and there was an incipient puffiness under them. His hands were unsteady, too; I noted that fact when he opened the cigars. And afterward, when he dropped on the sofa and settled back against the cushions, he extended his right hand as I had seen him do once or twice before, back at Yokohama, and make an unsuccessful effort to hold it still. Then he let it fall across his knee, and for a moment stared gloomily at the carpet.

I observed, too, that he was more nervous. He moved with a jerky abruptness. And when he glanced up at me, it was suddenly, with a perceptible start, as if I had spoken sharply, though in reality I had not spoken at all. It made me think of the torturing confusion of moods that was racking his nervous system, and of the merciless voices of unrest that were so evidently whispering every moment at his inner ear. A few days ago I would not have observed his condition with any sympathetic understanding; but now that I, too, have been torn between the exaltation of love and the degradation of jealousy, I can only shake my head in a sad sort of wonder at the mysterious strength of these forces that drive men and women together, and apart, and that linger even after a mismating and a subsequent separation to stir and bewilder the spirit.... Yes, I can, in a way, feel with Crocker now. To live with memories of magical hours passed with a woman one has since lost--elusive, poignant memories, that come in the still hours of night to triumph over the brutal facts of the day that is gone and the day that is to come--this is the stuff of tragedy.

My feelings soared far, as I sat there--all in a moment. I was thinking of strong passions and of elemental things. It came to me, oddly, that I had never really understood certain of the great poems and the greater music dramas. I told myself that I must seize the first opportunity to hear “Tristan” again. I would understand if now. Yes, surely... there was the surging, heartbreaking climax of the “Liebestod,” for example--it was surging in my feelings now, and in my brain. I could hear the swelling of the violins. And I knew all at once that it was not the mere heartbreak of Isolde and her Tristan that surged and swelled with them, I knew that it was the universal story of man and woman everywhere. Underneath the trivial vulgarity of the daily newspaper, with its commonplace recital of petty dramas and pettier tragedies, I suddenly knew, surge and swell the hopes and dreams and casual disasters of a million Tristans and a million Isoldes. It is men like Crocker and myself, I thought, and women like Heloise, who enact, all unconsciously, tossed helplessly about on great billows of feeling, the heroic drama of life.

It was the inner man that dwelt on these stirring things. The outer me was declining a cigar, and taking the easy chair, and for a moment letting my eyes w ander about the room. It was going to be pretty difficult to broach the subject. I could see that. Yet it had somehow to be done.

There was a bottle half full of whisky on the table, and glasses. Evidently the embargo had been raised. I could not help staring at that bottle for a moment. And, though he did not raise his eyes, I felt that Crocker knew what was in my thoughts.

His suit-case, with the cover thrown back, rested on a chair by the wall. The contents were rumpled about; but among them, right on top, I saw a knife-handle of Japanese lacquer and silver projecting from a lacquered sheath with a silver tip.

He caught me looking at it, sprang up--with an abruptness that made me jump--and slammed down the cover of the suit-case.

Then he came back to the sofa with a short laugh that was plainly designed to cover inner embarrassment, and poured out a good three fingers of the whisky. He drank it neat.

“Have some?” he said.

I shook my head.

“It settles my stomach,” he continued, with an air of apology. “I have n't been at all well lately.”

I watched him while he poured out another, and tossed it down.

He lighted a cigar.

“Where you stopping?” he asked. “Have n't seen you around here, have I?”

I shook my head.

“There's another hotel here, then?” said he. And his eyes narrowed craftily.

“Oh, yes,” I replied, “two or three.”

Then I hesitated. But after all, why evade the man? I had come to his room with precisely the opposite intent. So, with a nervous abruptness not unlike his own, I gave him the name of my hotel--and Heloise's. And at the same time I watched him closely to see if it conveyed anything to him.

Plainly it didn't. He merely blew out a long spear of smoke, followed it for a moment with his eyes, and then glanced down at the cigar that he was turning slowly round and round between his fingers.

But he could not sit quietly for any length of time. He got up again, with that same jerky abruptness, and, muttering something about the room being close, strode to the window and threw it open.

He knew that he was acting rather uncivilly, for he turned to me then and said, with a fairly good imitation of a casual manner--“Mind a little air?”

“Not at all,” I replied. It was depressing to be talking thus about nothing, knowing so well what was in his heart and what was in mine. But I only mumbled the stereotyped phrase, “Not at all.”

He took another drink--neat again. Then he drummed on the table with the fingers of one hand.

If there is one thing above another that I abominate, it is that kind of idle drumming. He made it worse by whistling softly between his teeth a crude song of the streets. I knew that I must keep myself in hand, but could not help fidgeting a little in my chair.

Nervously self-centered as he was, my discomfort quite escaped him, of course. What stopped his whistling and drumming appeared to be a sudden thought that came to him with the tune.

He looked down at me. His eyes narrowed again. He opened his mouth, then abruptly closed it on the words that were so close to utterance.

When he did speak, I felt certain that his question was not the one he had meant at first to ask.

“How's the phonograph business?” he said, and tried to smile.

“It's all right,” I replied shortly.

He sat down on the edge of the sofa, elbows on knees, and smoked fast.

“What sort of place is that hotel of yours?” he inquired, after a little.

“Middling. Not so good as this.”

“Near by?”

“Not far.”

“I suppose any rickshaw man would know the way,” he mused.

He fell silent again. Then, finally, he put the question that was on his mind, not looking at me, trying to speak casually; but his voice was not quite steady, and I could see the cigar shake in his hand:--

“Have you happened to see a woman over there--young, good looking, rather slender, blue eyes? Could n't say what name she'd be using.”

In a flash I knew that this was my opening. And on a great wave of relief--for we had to come to the issue--I leaned back in my chair and said, “There is such a woman there. She is using the name of Crocker.” Then I watched him.

I have never seen a man's face go so blank. His jaw dropped--literally. And his eyes were wide.

I found myself returning his gaze, and nodding rather emphatically. I kept on nodding.

Then I said, holding his eyes with mine--

“See here, Crocker, I know all about that. You told me yourself. Have you forgotten?” Slowly the recollection came to him. “Oh, yes,” he replied, “at Yokohama.”

“And you told Sir Robert at Nagasaki. Have you forgotten that?”

This seemed to sting him. “How do you know I did?” he asked sharply.

“He told me. We talked you over. I asked him about the legal possibility of placing you under some sort of restraint.”

Curiously, this didn't anger him. He merely looked puzzled. I wonder if I am doomed to remain ineffectual to the last--an odd, scientific little person, to be humored by the practical men of this rough-and-ready world, even in their least practical moments.

“I don't get you, Eckhart,” said he. “What have you to do with my affairs?”

“At this moment--everything,” I answered him, feeling suddenly very sad.

Sad, because it came to me that you can not talk intelligently with another human being without a common language. And this, I knew all at once, Crocker and I did not have. I had thought of many things that I should say to him; now I had lost confidence in all of them, for I realized that the word which means one thought to me would mean another and different thought to him. Each of us would have to interpret words and phrases in the light of his own mental images. And the mental images of each were outgrowths of his individual philosophy of life.

Yes, my arguments, that had, on the way over, seemed so potent, would not do now. In order to reach that mind of his, I must think in his terms and not in my own. And I tried, desperately, to piece together something like his code, as I sat there.... That man is a free and dominant creature, half god, half beast; that a small, sheltered section of womankind is of superior, almost divine stuff, designed to comfort and elevate man on his god side, to bear his children and, under his own general government, “keep his house,” while the other and greater section of this same womankind is mysteriously of poorer stuff, and is worthy only to do his rougher work at such a wage as can be wrung from him or (in a pitifully matter-of-fact way) to cater to the vices of his beast side--something like this was surely Crocker's sort of philosophy.

I tried to bring myself to realize what this meant. Holding so curious a faith, it was surely natural enough that he should have tried to force poor Heloise's life into his own hard mold of thought and habit. Nor is it unnatural that he should have been outraged when this lovely possession turned in despair from the atmosphere of suppression and inactivity in which he had been so determined to keep her and tried, blunderingly, all wrong, to find an outlet for the fine spirit stirring in the depths of her being.

For this was rebellion. And Crocker, I can see, hates rebellion. His sort always do. He is profoundly a conventional man, even in his vices.

I thought all this in a swift moment, as I sat there, wondering, wondering, how I could say the things that must somehow be said.

Crocker waited as long as he could for me to go on, keeping himself busy with his cigar. Once I thought I detected a furtive expression on his face, as if he dreaded what was to come.

The man was conscious of his own inner weakness, of course. He must have been. Perhaps he remembered telling me of his solemn resolution to give up liquor. Even as this thought occurred to me, he reached out and again tipped that convenient bottle. It seemed to me that there was an extra set to his chin as he did this, a slightly overemphasized casualness that bordered on bravado.

Then he sprang to his feet and moved about the room behind me.

As for myself, I was cool enough. And, once I could hit on the proper beginning to the talk, I felt pretty sure that I could handle the situation. It is evident to me now that the plan I arrived at last night, there in Heloise's room, had cleared the air for me. For I knew--deep, deep in my heart I knew--that I stood ready to give Heloise up. There is selfishness enough in me, God knows. There will be moments of weakness, when the touch of her hand, the blue of her eyes or the shadow of her long lashes on her skin--perhaps even the mention of her name by some common acquaintance--will stir that strange magic that has, in such different ways, torn Crocker's heart and mine. But I believe I shall never again forget that the woman I love, has a life to build, and that the finest duty I have is to help her build it.

I heard a rustling behind me. I turned. Crocker had thrown aside his lounging robe, and was getting into his street clothes. While I sat there watching him, he put on his waistcoat and coat. He put on his hat, pushing it back on his head. Then he busied himself transferring his pocketbook, a handful of small change, some papers and a key ring from the pockets of another suit that hung from a hook on the closet door.

I got right up and stood there, by the table.