Laurence drank deeply; but he had never felt clearer, never seen things more clearly.  The wine gave him what he wanted, an edge to these few hours of pleasure, an exaltation of energy.  It dulled his sense of pity, too.  It was pity he was afraid of—­for himself, and for this girl.  To make even this tawdry room look beautiful, with firelight and candlelight, dark amber wine in the glasses, tall pink lilies spilling their saffron, exuding their hot perfume he and even himself must look their best.  And with a weight as of lead on her heart, she managed that for him, letting him strew her with flowers and crush them together with herself.  Not even music was lacking to their feast.  Someone was playing a pianola across the street, and the sound, very faint, came stealing when they were silent—­swelling, sinking, festive, mournful; having a far-off life of its own, like the flickering fire-flames before which they lay embraced, or the lilies delicate between the candles.  Listening to that music, tracing with his finger the tiny veins on her breast, he lay like one recovering from a swoon.  No parting.  None!  But sleep, as the firelight sleeps when flames die; as music sleeps on its deserted strings.

And the girl watched him.

It was nearly ten when he bade her go to bed.  And after she had gone obedient into the bedroom, he brought ink and paper down by the fire.  The drifter, the unstable, the good-for-nothing—­did not falter.  He had thought, when it came to the point, he would fail himself; but a sort of rage bore him forward.  If he lived on, and confessed, they would shut him up, take from him the one thing he loved, cut him off from her; sand up his only well in the desert.  Curse them!  And he wrote by firelight which mellowed the white sheets of paper; while, against the dark curtain, the girl, in her nightgown, unconscious of the cold, stood watching.

Men, when they drown, remember their pasts.  Like the lost poet he had “gone with the wind.”  Now it was for him to be true in his fashion.  A man may falter for weeks and weeks, consciously, subconsciously, even in his dreams, till there comes that moment when the only thing impossible is to go on faltering.  The black cap, the little driven grey man looking up at it with a sort of wonder—­faltering had ceased!

He had finished now, and was but staring into the fire.

         “No more, no more, the moon is dead,
          And all the people in it;
          The poppy maidens strew the bed,
          We’ll come in half a minute.”

Why did doggerel start up in the mind like that?  Wanda!  The weed-flower become so rare he would not be parted from her!  The fire, the candles, and the fire—­no more the flame and flicker!

And, by the dark curtain, the girl watched.

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