A terrible obstinacy located itself in him.  He saw the fine, rich-coloured, secretive face of the Hebrew woman, so loudly self-righteous, and so dangerous, so destructive, so lustful—­and he waited for his blood to melt with passion for her.  But not tonight.  Tonight his innermost heart was hard and cold as ice.  The very danger and lustfulness of her, which had so pricked his senses, now made him colder.  He disliked her at her tricks.  He saw her once too often.  Her and all women.  Bah, the love game!  And the whiskey that was to help in the game!  He had drowned himself once too often in whiskey and in love.  Now he floated like a corpse in both, with a cold, hostile eye.

And at least half of his inward fume was anger because he could no longer drown.  Nothing would have pleased him better than to feel his senses melting and swimming into oneness with the dark.  But impossible!  Cold, with a white fury inside him, he floated wide eyed and apart as a corpse.  He thought of the gentle love of his first married years, and became only whiter and colder, set in more intense obstinacy.  A wave of revulsion lifted him.

He became aware that he was deadly antagonistic to the landlady, that he disliked his whole circumstances.  A cold, diabolical consciousness detached itself from his state of semi-intoxication.

“Is it pretty much the same out there in India?” he asked of the doctor, suddenly.

The doctor started, and attended to him on his own level.

“Probably,” he answered.  “It is worse.”

“Worse!” exclaimed Aaron Sisson.  “How’s that?”

“Why, because, in a way the people of India have an easier time even than the people of England.  Because they have no responsibility.  The British Government takes the responsibility.  And the people have nothing to do, except their bit of work—­and talk perhaps about national rule, just for a pastime.”

“They have to earn their living?” said Sisson.

“Yes,” said the little doctor, who had lived for some years among the colliers, and become quite familiar with them.  “Yes, they have to earn their living—­and then no more.  That’s why the British Government is the worst thing possible for them.  It is the worst thing possible.  And not because it is a bad government.  Really, it is not a bad government.  It is a good one—­and they know it—­much better than they would make for themselves, probably.  But for that reason it is so very bad.”

The little oriental laughed a queer, sniggering laugh.  His eyes were very bright, dilated, completely black.  He was looking into the ice-blue, pointed eyes of Aaron Sisson.  They were both intoxicated—­but grimly so.  They looked at each other in elemental difference.

The whole room was now attending to this new conversation:  which they all accepted as serious.  For Aaron was considered a special man, a man of peculiar understanding, even though as a rule he said little.