For Lovey now was almost as completely reconstructed as I. I use the qualifying “almost” only because the longer standing of his habits and the harder conditions of his life had burnt the past more indelibly into him. Of either of us one could say, as the Florentines are reported to have said of Dante, “There goes a man who has been in hell”; but the marks of the experience had been laid more brutally on my companion than on me.
Otherwise he showed cheering signs of resuscitation. Neat, even at the worst of times, he was now habitually scrubbed and shaved, and as elegant as Colonel Straight’s establishment could turn him out. He had, in fact, for the hours he had free from washing windows, metamorphosed himself into the typical, self-respecting English valet, with a pride in his work sprung chiefly of devotion.
And for me he made a home. I mean by that that he was always there—something living to greet me, to move about in the dingy little apartment. As I am too gregarious, I may say too affectionate, to live contentedly alone, it meant much to me to have some one else within the walls I called mine, even if actual companionship was limited.
But whatever it was, I was about to destroy it. I could scarcely look him in the eyes; I could hardly say a word to him.
While unpacking my suit-case he said, timorously, “Y’ain’t sick, Slim?”
I began to change the suit I had been wearing for one that would attract less attention at Stinson’s.
“No, Lovey; I’m all right. I’m just—I’m just going out.”
And I went out. I went out without bidding the poor old fellow good-by, though I knew it was the last the anxious pale-blue eyes would see of me in that phase of comradeship. When next we met I should probably be drunk, and he would have come to get drunk in my company. It would then be a question as to which of us would hold out the longer.
And that was the thought that after an hour or two turned me back. I could throw my own life away, but I couldn’t throw away his. However reckless I might be on my own account, I couldn’t be so when I held another man’s fate in my hand.