Then if she puts her arms around me—if she touches me again, I'll hate her. And she'll see. . . . I can't do it."
Then a thought came to him of such exquisite relief that he sank into a chair, suddenly grown weak.
"She doesn't mean it. . . . I'll put the letter under the door again, where she'll see it from the hall. She's sure to come out after me. And I won't answer; then she'll think I never got it."
So he replaced the letter and sat down to wait.
What was she doing in there? Not a sound came through the thin partition. What was she doing? What could she do? Think? Her thoughts would be unendurable; he fancied that they were drifting in through the wall in little invisible clouds, acrid, bitter with tears, of no form or substance.
But if he went to her now, and set this right for a day, a month, there would be the rest of her life to be passed in there, thinking.
"No! She'll come," he thought. "She'll take her letter away again, and nothing will happen. She'll simply go on. And I'll go on . . . the natural course of events."
The phrase was soothing until he analysed it and recalled instances of the natural course of events in certain cases he had observed. He was ready to believe that a humane man might well occupy his life in deflecting the natural course of events.
The clock in the Metropolitan tower struck eleven. What was she doing?
"She's dropped asleep. . . . Or she's forgotten. She's capable of forgetting anything, losing anything in that incredibly muddled brain of hers. And last night she was—distinctly exaltée. . . . Very much so!"
For a moment he was able to see something amusing in this thing.
"It's a compliment," he observed, with a faint grin. "A lady to threaten to die for me. That's something, after all."
Then he remembered her face. He sprang up, overturning the chair and the crash it made seemed a new affront to her august and terrible silence. He wanted to hurry to her and apologize. Apologize for pity?
"If I make a row, she'll come out," he thought. "She'll want to know whether I'm 'sad.'"
He moved about noisily, angrily, for a time, but she did not come.
