shoulder, and checked me. He loomed over me.

“Whatever you do, my boy,” he was saying, “keep your head. That woman
has already wrecked two lives that we know of--possibly a third. Don't
let her wreck yours.”

I wrenched away from him, and struck out alone into the narrow, muddy
street between the Chinese houses.

I walked twice around the _glacis_ that borders the Legation Quarter on
the north, and through the Quarter from end to end on Legation Street.
Scenes flitted past me that I only half saw--Peking carts with blue
covers and little window's in the sides, innumerable street merchants
uttering musical cries and offering trays of queer-smelling foods, and
the usual indolent, good-humored crowds of blue-clad yellow men, with
round yellow' children playing everywhere, underfoot and out in the mud
of the street. In the Ha Ta Road a long wedding procession was passing,
with an ornate red sedan chair for the poor little bride, and musical
instruments that I did not so much as observe. I saw the stiff, cowed
German soldiers on sentry duty at the eastern end of Legation Street,
and, farther along, the solid masonry building of the Hongkong Bank;
and, down a side street, the great, showy, extremely modern Wagon-lits
Hotel. I vaguely noted the walls and trees of the British Compound,
where centered the defense against the Boxer attack a dozen years ago.
I strode by the American Compound, at the western end, and caught a
glimpse through the open gate of lounging American boys in their olive
drab. And, emerging on the plaza between the great Chien Gate in the
Tartar Wall and the entrance to the Imperial City, I came upon a long
train of laden camels, just in from Mongolia, each with a string in its
ugly nose.

And all the way I knew that the confused forces that have been tearing
at me during this disturbing week were merging into a new line of force.
I knew, even then, that this meant a new direction for my life--my
life that I once thought so simply and clearly outlined, so perfectly
centered on a single interest. Now--God knows what is to become of me!

Did Sir Robert do this amazing thing to me? I can not think clearly. I
am that way at times--I let another try to bring me to his own point of
view, he is more likely than not merely to rouse my own inner voices. I
never follow--I lead.

However it be, I only know now that I am a man with blazing fires in
me--fires that both sear and illuminate my mind, my emotions, my soul.
It is glorious. And terrible.

It was nearly six o'clock when I came into my room. I observed that the
connecting door stood part way open. This meant, I had come to know,
that she was in, and that I was welcome.

I tiptoed to the door, and tapped on it with the tips of my fingers.

She was sitting by her balcony, sewing.

“Did you have a good walk?” she asked softly.

She seemed less sad. When I had tossed my hat and stick aside and
entered her room, it seemed to me even that a smile was hovering on her
lovely face. I could not be certain of this, for she kept her head bowed
over her work.

I dropped into a chair by her, and looked at her. Yes, she seemed
distinctly softer, even more subtly feminine (as we say) than usual,
bending over the needle that moved nimbly to and fro. It struck me that
sewing brought out the beauty of her hands.

Finally she raised her head and looked at me. She _was_ smiling.

“I've got it,” she said. “Listen.”

And with a quick breath and a slight stiffening of her shoulders she
began singing the scale upward from middle _c_--sitting there with her
sewing in her lap. I listened closely. Heretofore she had usually begun
to miss the eighth-tone intervals when she reached _a_ and _b_. Now she
took them perfectly. I could not detect the slightest inaccuracy of
pitch. I noticed that she kept to a marked rhythm, all the way up. The
upper _c_ she held, with a sudden triumphant glance at me, and trilled
on it, very softly.

It brought me to my feet. “Come,” I said gruffly, “we'll take that down
on the machine.” She followed into my room, explaining eagerly as she
watched me putting on the cylinder--“You see, to-day, I realized all at
once that I've been downright stupid about it. It occurred to me that
singing with a rhythm might carry me right along through it. And then
besides I just stopped fussing, and made up my mind that _of course_ I
could do it. I can do it again, too. You'll see.”

She promptly did it again. Again and again, as rapidly as I could put
on new cylinders. I seized the occasion to make twelve records. Then we
both listened attentively while I played them all over. There was not
the slightest doubt that ten were perfect--or so nearly perfect that
they satisfied us. And that is near enough. My hands trembled as I put
each cylinder back in its box and carefully wrote the labels. Oh, it has
been a tremendous day, this day!

She stood right over the machine throughout this performance--and we
must have been an hour at it. I asked her to sit, but she laughed a
little and said she was too excited.

When the labeled boxes were all carefully put away in a drawer of my
bureau, where no accident short of fire could reach them, I came to her
and took her two hands. Then suddenly I could not say anything at all.

But she looked right at me, and returned, very frankly, the pressure of
my hands, and smiled, though there were tears in her own eyes.

“I'm so glad,” she said. “You just don't know--I've wanted so to be of
_use_--”

She gently tried to withdraw her hands. I released one, but, still
unable to speak, clung to the other; and hand in hand we walked to the
French window and stepped out, side by side, on the narrow balcony.
Then I let her hand go, and we leaned on the railing and breathed in the
sweet April air.

[Illustration: 0143]

It was evening now. Electric lights were twinkling. Gay paper lanterns
hung out from nearby buildings. The confusion of street cries floated up
faintly to our ears.

My time had come.

But it was hard to speak directly. First I told her how wonderfully she
has helped me, and to what a practical end.

All she said to this was--very softly, gazing off at the lights--“I'm
glad.”

I rambled on. Which would not do. My time _had_ come, and I was
letting it slip away. It was characteristic of me, I thought almost
bitterly--always, except in the one narrow channel of my work,
blundering ineffectually, missing the realities of life.

I gathered my forces, with a great effort. I felt sober, stem, all at
once.

“Listen, please,” I began.

Instantly I knew that she had caught the change in me. I thought I felt
her nerves tighten, though I was not touching her. I blundered on.

“You have come to know me,” I said.

“Yes,” she breathed, “I have come to know you.”

“And by this time you know just about the sort of man I am. I must
assume that you know that, because I expect you to take all of me into
account in what I am going to say. I know I shall say it badly. I doubt
if I shall succeed at all in saying even what I mean. Yet, you've got to
understand me.”

She kept silent; but it seemed to me, in the subtle understanding we had
somehow reached, that she assented to this preliminary condition.

“I am going to put it bluntly,” I rushed on “It's the only way I can say
it at all. I see two facts, as regards you and me. One is that you are
a wonderful woman. You have great gifts. You have what we call
temperament--a silly word, but there is no other for the precise
meaning. It is an absurd waste to keep you here. You must go to Berlin
or Paris--Paris, I think, for the French music is the most stimulating
of any today. You must be prepared for opera just as rapidly as
possible. There is no time to lose.”

Her mouth twisted into a fleeting half-smile. “It is quite out of the
question,” she murmured.

“No, it is not out of the question!” My voice was rising, and she had
to give me a warning look. “I do not know quite how it is to be managed,
but I can see a beginning, at least.”

She seemed surprised at this, so I talked more and more rapidly. “First,
you must consider my second fact. Remember, I am speaking only as a
practical scientist--quite impersonally.” God forgive me, this seemed
true at the moment! “What you have done for me has a value that I dare
not even estimate. Though my income is not great, even from my text
books, I would gladly have traveled thousands of miles and devoted
months of work to the securing of the phonographic close-interval scale
that now is securely mine.”

She was beginning to stir restlessly. But I would not let her speak.
“Take your copying and clerical work alone--perhaps, I should not
say this--I could not possibly get such devoted and expert assistance
anywhere in the world without paying a reasonable price by the week. Now
hear me! You must not close your mind to what I am saying!” For I
knew she was doing just that, as women will. I caught her arm--and her
hand--in my two hands and clung to her. She did not resist. Nor did she
respond--merely looked soberly off over the city, and seemed, all the
time, to be drifting away from me. My head was burning hot. My forehead
was dripping wet, and I had to shake the drops of sweat out of my eyes.
Great, wild thoughts were gripping my mind, that had been so confused.
I knew then that I must get her out of Peking, away from that ugly,
persistent old man across the hall, away from the drink-crazed younger
man who thought he could by a violent act restore what he called his
honor. I knew that I must be equal to this task. I must find the way.
And I must persuade her.

So I cried--

“You _must_ listen! I will not place you in my debt. But you have placed
me in yours. You must be fair to me. You must let me help you by paying
my debt to you. I promise you I will do more than that. But oh, you must
be fair to me!”

She would not look at me. I had her right forearm and hand in the grip
of my hot, trembling hands. Her left elbow rested on the iron railing of
the balcony, her chin on her hand. And her eyes roved off over the roofs
of the Chinese houses, over the walls and trees of the Legation Quarter,
off southward toward the temple of Heaven that stood somewhere there
behind the trees and the starlit sky above it.

More and more my thoughts were slipping out of control. I struggled to
hold them, but could not. I had never in my life felt like this.

“You must not let the fact that I love you confuse your sense of
justice,” I went on, quite as if she and I had long known and admitted
my love for her. “That is another matter altogether. Except in this--I
know now that as long as I live I shall want to help you. This is quite
beyond your control, or mine. It simply happens to be so. And it does
seem to me that since it is so, you can at least let me help you to the
extent that is practically and impersonally fair.”

It was curious how the mere utterance of those three words, “I love
you,” cleared my mind. It explained everything. It relieved me by
extricating me from all uncertainty of thought and feeling. It thrilled
me, deeply and solemnly. I wanted to say it over and over and over. I
wanted to take her into my arms and whisper it into one ear and then
into the other. I wanted to whisper it to the stars up there, the stars
that have heard so much. I wanted to go over to the big hotel in the
Quarter, where there would be bright lights and tourists and gilded
military folk and gay ladies, and say it so that all might hear and
share the thrill of it.

My talk dwindled out. What part had more argument in _this?_ My grip on
her arm relaxed; I held only to her unresponsive hand, and leaned on the
railing beside her.

For a long, long time we were still there. Then, finally she withdrew
her hand.

I looked at her and saw that her eyes were shining, and there were tears
on her cheek.

“Oh,” she murmured, “why--why--could n't we have gone on!”

“You don't mean that we can't go on!” said I.

She looked full at me, and inclined her head. To-day she has had more
color, her face has not had so much of the worn, tired look. But now, by
the half-light that fell on her from the window, I saw that it had all
returned. She was very sad, very tired.

“You have spoken.” she said, “of money--and of love. Oh, I wish you had
n't!”

Then she must have read my feelings on my face, for she put her hand on
my arm and added--

“I did not mean to hurt you. It has been beautiful. You don't know--even
you, you don't know. You almost made life mean something again. Nothing
that I could ever do would pay you back for that. It made me almost
happy--just to be useful. All my life I have wanted to be that. And they
have made a toy of me. Or they have wanted me to do something I could
n't do. You have helped me to do what I can do.”

“It _has_ been beautiful,” I thought. Or perhaps I said it aloud, for
she inclined her head again.

“It has been like a dream,” she said. “I know it could n't be so, but
oh, how I have clung to it! I have blundered so with my life... but this
seemed real.”

“It is real,” said I.

She looked away.

Again for a time we stood silently there, and looked out over the
curving tile roofs.

And again I felt that she was slipping away from me. It was good that I
had spoken my love.

That would stay in her thoughts. Perhaps it would grow there. Perhaps
the magic that was stirring wonderfully in my heart would touch and
stir her heart. I knew at that moment that I loved her more than all the
world--more than my work, more than my life. I knew, with exultation,
that I was plunging out into uncharted ways, where lives are as often
wrecked as not. And I did not care. I was glad.

Her shoulder brushed mine, as we leaned side by side on the railing.
There was sheer intoxication in that contact. I raised my arm, fairly
holding my breath, and put it about her shoulders. I caught her two
hands, there by her chin. I saw lights, trees, sky in a swirl of happy
things. A voice was thrilling in my heart. I gripped her tightly, and
tried to kiss her. But she struggled. She tried to push me away. She
fought me.

And then, as I staggered back, the tears came from my own eyes, blinding
me.

She ran back into my room, and stood there.

I followed. “It was in my heart to do it!” I was saying, like a fool.
“It was in my heart to do it!”

She dropped on a chair, very limp and white. She motioned me to take
another.

“You must not be like the others,” she was saying, in a desperate,
choking voice--“you must not! I can't bear it!”

I could not think. “I am not,” I replied, low--“I am not. I love you.
You shall see.”

This was getting us nowhere. Her eyes were dry now, and oh, so sad and
tired. She was slowly shaking her head at me.

“You are killing--everything!” she said. But she said it gently.

I could not speak, I only looked at her--looked and looked. Then I went
over to the phonograph and worked aimlessly over it. I think I wound it
up.

She still sat there, her hands limp in her lap.

Finally she said, in a low voice that was y et steady--“I wish I could
love you.”

“You can,” I muttered. “You shall!”

She slowly shook her head. “No,” she breathed.

“But you must,” I went on. “It is the only thing now. It is the one way
out for you and me.”

This had some effect on her. She pursed her lips, and thought.

But after a little she shook her head again, and made that listless
gesture of her left hand that she had made that first day, when I broke
into her room.

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

She rose, and moved toward her own room. On the sill she paused, and
picked at the flaking paint of the door frame.

“I do not believe it is the only way out,” she said. “You will get over
it, of course.” Then, at the shake of my head, she corrected--“At least,
you will have your work, and the feeling that you are getting somewhere
with your life. I should think that would be the one great thing, after
all. And I shall at least know that I am not hurting another life.
I hurt everybody, that cares for me. If I could--love you, I should
undoubtedly hurt you.”

“Wait,” said I, “we will go on with our work, at least--in the morning.”

She pursed her lips again. “I don't know,” she replied, as if she were
thinking aloud, “whether that is possible.”

“It must be possible!”

She shook her head. “You will have to let me think about that.”

Then she closed the door, and was gone.

I had meant to give her my life. I had only succeeded in taking away
from her that part of it that had been helpful to her.

I find it difficult to reconstruct the hour that followed. I remember
standing a long while by the window. Once I went to her door, just so
that I might hear her moving about her room. But as I stood there it
seemed like an intrusion, and I came away.

Many, many things that I might have said to her came rushing to my
thoughts. I wanted to say them now. I wanted to go right into her room
and say them.

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.

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.

[Illustration: 0241]

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.

“Tell you what, old man,” said he, rather apologetically. “I'm all out
of sorts. Guess I need the outside air. You don't mind, do you?”

“Yes,” I replied, with a ring in my voice that was surprising even to
myself. “I do mind. I've got something to say to you.”

“Don't talk about that,” said he, and walked to the open window, with
his hands thrust deep into his pockets.

“But I will talk about it, Crocker. It is what I came here to talk
about. And I propose to make you talk about it, also.”

He offered no reply; just stood there, staring out the window. I went
on. I don't know now where the words were coming from that rushed so
unexpectedly to my lips; but I knew, as I uttered them, that before
either of us should leave that room he would be taking me seriously.

“There is a woman over yonder, in the Hôtel de Chine,” I said “From your
own confession to me, you have followed her here to kill her. There is
nobody but me to talk to you, but you are not going to dispose of me
so easily. This thing is going to be settled. It is going to be settled
to-day--and without any killing, We are not living in that sort of an
age, Crocker. Not quite.”

“What do you mean--settled?” he muttered, without turning.

“Settled. Just that. And there won't be any murder. You and I are going
to arrange terms of separation between Heloise and yourself. Then you
are going home. You will leave this city before night. You may go either
way--Tientsin or Hankow; it is the same to me. But you've got to go....
Will you please sit down here and try to discuss this thing like a
rational man?”

Now he did turn.

“I suppose you think you can talk to me like this,” he said, with
something of a sneer.

“I think just that,” I replied. “Sit down, please. We shall see if I can
drive a little sense into that fuddled mind of yours.”

I stood there waiting. He did not move, except, it seemed to me, to
square his shoulders. And there was the same set to his chin that I had
noted a few moments earlier, when he was drinking.

“I'm standing a good deal from you, Eckhart,” he said. “But after all,
I've got nothing against you. You can't be expected to understand these
things.” This evidently struck him as a happy idea, and he repeated it:
“You can't be expected to understand these things.”

Suddenly he frowned. “How'd you know her name was Heloise?” he asked.

“How did I know?” I repeated. “I will tell you how. I will tell you
much that you yourself do not understand.” My voice was rising. I had
to struggle to control myself. But I knew that I must, for it was not
myself I was fighting for now. “We will not waste words, you and I. We
are past that, Crocker--far past it, if you only knew. I have seen”--the
words “your wife” had come to my tongue, but I could not say them; it
was a profanation even to think of that fine woman as “his”--“I have
seen Heloise. I have come to know her. I have seen how sad she is, and
what a struggle she has been making to begin doing something with her
life. For she has been alone, Crocker--”

“Alone?”

“Yes. She did not stay with that other man. She could not. And she has
been struggling all alone.” I fought back the emotion that was breaking
into my voice. “I know you both now, Crocker--pretty well. And knowing
you both, I can see, oh, so clearly, that she could never, never be
happy with a man like you. She has ability, she has spirit, she has what
they call temperament. She is an artist. And do you not know, man, that
the artist must always be struggling toward expression, that his whole
life is nothing but that struggling? You can not make a domestic drudge
of such a woman. Of some women--yes. But not of the artist. You tried
to do just that. You chose the woman who was beautiful to your eyes, and
whose spirit made her most desirable, and then you tried to crush that
spirit. I have no doubt she tried to submit, that she fought her own
finest qualities, for years, in the hopeless effort to make of herself
what you demanded. And then she broke--all helpless, all dependent on
you as she was--and risked everything to get away from you because it
was worse than death to her to be with you. And now you hound her around
the world like the savage beast that you are.... Good God, man, can't
you see that she was _right_ in leaving you! Can't you see that it was
the finest, bravest thing she could have done!”

I stood, strung up, all blazing with the fire that was in me. I knew I
had broken bounds. I thought that now, surely, he would turn on me and
fight me; and I did not care. I even thought wildly of settling it all
with him then and there, with blows, as men do. For I had the fire
and the will within me; while he, with all his height and strength and
native vigor, was palsied with that poison that eats away a man's will
and leaves but a shell of bluster.

But instead of anger on his face, as I stared into it, I saw only
bewilderment. He seemed to be groping after the ends of a new concept,
with a mind that had lost something of its power to grasp new concepts.

“Good Lord,” he said then, “you're talking as if you were in love with
her yourself.”

I nodded at him, breathless and deeply solemn. “I am,” I said. “I love
Heloise, and I shall love her with all my heart until I die.”

Perhaps I was guilty of a tactical blunder in giving him this
information. He was so evidently not himself that he should have been
handled with tact and not further confused. As it stood, I had laid the
train of a profounder confusion than I could possibly have foreseen. But
I had to say it.

He was still groping to comprehend this amazing thought.

“I don't get you,” he said. He was not looking at me now, and seemed
to be talking more to himself than to me. “You have n't known her--it's
only a few days--”

“It is nearly two weeks.”

“But you don't mean”--he fell to walking about the room, and I followed
him with my eyes--“you don't mean to say--”

He stopped short, and pondered. Then he turned toward me; and it seemed
to me he appeared more like his normal self than at any time since I had
entered the room.

“So you 're talking for yourself,” he observed, coldly.

“No,” I replied, “I am not.”

“But you tell me you love her--”

“That does not stand in the way of my doing precisely what I insist that
you shall do--give her up.”

“That's easy to say, Eckhart.”

“It is not easy to do, Crocker. But Heloise must go to Europe, and take
up her study. Her gifts, her hopes, all lead her straight toward opera.
Neither you nor I has the right to stop her. It is the instinct for
expression, nothing else. You have followed that instinct freely in your
own life and work. I have followed it freely in mine. Now let her do the
same. Work--the sort of work that will give scope to his own peculiar
sort of energy--is what every human being needs. It is, above all, what
Heloise needs. It will be her salvation, if anything will. Can't you get
that into your head? She doesn't need any application of the punitive
frenzy that we men call justice. She does n't need the easy moralizing
of men like you--and me. She needs _work!_... As regards my giving her
up--she goes to Paris; I stay here in China for at least two years. If
you can think of any way in which I can put more miles than that between
us, tell me, and I'll promptly give up my own plans and do it.” And I
snapped my finger.

Some of my phrases were over his head, I suppose. But he came back at me
with a good deal of vigor, ignoring my intense mood:--

“You tell me you love her,” he said; “and you talk about giving her up.
You don't mean to say that you think she is in love with you?”

This sobered me--suddenly. I felt my eyes drop, and the hot color coming
back into my face.

The talk was turning on me in a way I had not precisely foreseen. But
after all--it was only fair. Certainly I had shown no hesitation at
exposing his hurt places. So I raised my eyes and looked squarely at
him, knowing that, though it would be torture, I should tell him the
truth as I had been coming to see it during these morning hours.

I shook my head.

“I should hope not!” he muttered.

I paid no heed to him. The thing now was to get the truth out and have
it over with.

“There have been one or two moments when I dared think she was beginning
to love me,” I went on. “But I was reasoning from my hopes. She was
alone. She was destitute--desperate. There was no one she could turn
to, except myself. She knew that I had come to love her. And hurt and
crushed as she was--with all the gratitude that the biggest heart I have
ever known could--But what is the good of this! What fault there has
been, is mine. She is a buoyant, vital thing, an artist, all spirit and
fire. Even in her suffering I can see that. There have been glimpses,
when we were working and she could forget for a moment. I am a quiet
man, a man of the study, a narrow man.”

“Yes, you _are_ narrow,” he put in.

“She must have variety. She must have stirring moments, strong
reactions. She could not possibly be happy with me. And as for you,
Crocker--well, we know about that. You are quite impossible. You thought
you could possess her. Finding that you couldn't, you would kill her.”

He winced. I was glad to see it. I must make him wince. I must show him
that he was not only a brute, but an absurd one.

He went over to the bureau and rummaged nervously in the top drawer. I
could see, in the mirror, that his face was working, in the way it has
when he is deeply stirred. Then, after a moment of hesitation, he came
back to the table, and with a fair assumption of an offhand manner
reached for the whisky bottle.

I snatched it away from him, sprang to the window, and threw it out,
hard. I heard it break on the pavement below.

Then I turned and faced him, wondering, with a swift uprush of
excitement, what he would do. I had taken him quite by surprise, which
was a point for me. His great strength had not enabled him to keep that
bottle.

His first expression was a sort of hurt bewilderment. He took a step
toward me, but without any particular evidence of anger--more as if he
meant to protest.

Next he turned, slowly and heavily, in the direction of the bell. This
was over by the hall door. I ran toward it. A chair stood in the way,
and I remember throwing it over in my rush. I had my back against the
bell before he had got to the middle of the room.

He just stood there, trying to think. Then, abruptly, he turned back,
dropped on the sofa, and buried his face in his hands.

I came across the room, as far as the table, and stood over him until he
lifted his head. He was evidently fighting to keep from going to pieces.
And his pride was not yet wholly gone, for he said--

“See here, Eckhart, I'm not feeling well at all. Just let me ring for
a drink, and I'll talk with you. I will. I 'll talk. This thing has
driven me wild. But you're right enough, I suppose. Just push the bell,
will you? The thing has got to be settled. We'll settle it, you and
I. If you think there's really any show for her, on her own, I'll be
reasonable. It's been the thought of that fellow--of other men--Oh,
God!” His face dropped again on his hands.

It was at this point that I began to feel discouraged over the prospect
of arriving at any real settlement of the business. The man could not
be counted on to remain in the same state of mind for two consecutive
hours. I told him, in good round language, that he could not have
another drop of whisky; and he exhibited self-respect enough (for the
moment) to stop his whining.

Then for a little while I just sat on the edge of the table and looked
at him. This was Heloise's husband. My spirit revolted at the thought.
Her husband! The crude law under which we live actually gives such a man
“rights” over that fine woman. It was unthinkable. And it was so.

“Come out with it,” I heard him saying. “What's your proposition?”

I had to think quickly. For this, after all, was the opportunity I had
been so desperately seeking. I must talk straight.

“You are to let her have a divorce. If I know her at all, she will not
accept alimony--”

“Stuff!” said he. “Did you ever see anybody that would n't take money!”

They were as far apart as that, those two. I pushed right on--“but she
will have to accept something. A lump sum, say, on the ground that you
have held back her training and limited her immediate earning capacity.
I think, if that point is made very clear to her, she will be reasonable
about accepting enough to carry her through her two or three years of
study and the getting up of a repertoire. I would not ask her to agree
to more than that. Not from you.”

There, that was plain talk enough, surely, even for Crocker!

He took it pretty calmly. In fact, I am not sure that it wasn't
something of a relief to his hard head to get down to what he would call
“brass tacks”--meaning money, and the traffic in money.

“That's your proposition?” he said.

“That's my proposition.”

“And when do you want an answer?”

I must admit that he surprised me here. “Why,” I replied, “now. On the
spot.”

He shook his head.

“No,” said he. “You are asking me to agree to a plan that would change
my whole life.”

“For the better!” I interrupted eagerly.

“Perhaps,” said he. “Do you think I have traveled from New York to
Peking for the purpose of changing my mind in one minute, because you
ask me to?”

He had stiffened up, as he sat there, and was talking, all of a sudden,
quite like a responsible business man. Whether this change was merely a
momentary outcropping of self-respect, or whether there was man enough
in him to bring that drink-fuddled brain so swiftly under control, I
could not imagine.

“What else can you do?” I asked, as quietly and reasonably as I could
manage. “At this moment you seem more like your real self, Crocker, than
at any other time since I came in here--”

“I'm myself, all right,” he broke in gruffly. “Never you mind about
that. Let me hear your arguments.”

“--and you can't sit here, and look me in the eye, and tell me that
you seriously consider carrying out the insane purpose that brought you
here. You can't, man!”

“Cut that talk out!” he cried angrily. “Stick to your own side of it.”

“There is no other side of it, Crocker. You're not going to kill her.
She'll never go back to you. Your only possible course is to give her
up. And my guess is that you'll show yourself a reasonably good sport.”

This touched him. At last I had hit on a phrase that he could
understand, in all this ugly talk that I was driving so desperately at
him.

“Never mind that, either,” he growled.

I stood up, and looked at him. It seemed to me that I had him.
Certainly, he was avoiding my eyes.

He jerked out his watch, and stared at it, turning the stem around and
around between his fingers.

“It's eleven-fifteen,” he said, then slowly let the watch drop back in
his pocket.

He had smoked the last of his cigar. Now he lighted a fresh one.

“I'll give you my answer at two,” he added.

For a moment I did not know what to say to this.

“What's the matter,” he said, in that rough voice.

It was such a voice, I imagined, as he would employ with business
subordinates. “What's the matter? Isn't that reasonable? You've stated
your proposition. I'll think it over and give you my answer after lunch.
If I accept it, I'll pack up and leave Peking on the first train.”

Still I hesitated. He just sat and smoked.

“You know what's the matter,” I replied, finally. I decided to stick to
my policy of talking in his own blunt way. “How do I know that you will
be sober at two?”