Help her! He must help her! After she had lived with this man for months, giving herself to him! He stood up and walked down the room. It was like he used to do, pace up and down in front of her.
He wanted to talk but he found it hard. A rage was coming into his mind that obscured his words. The rage continued. Pausing in the center of the room Basine began to swear. His voice had grown high pitched.
"Damn!" he shouted at her, "and you come to me. Me! You bring your filthy sins to me! Damn his dirty soul! Yes, you're fine, you are! Leaving me to go with that chippy-chaser. I thought ... I thought you were somebody."
He stopped, his fist in the air. She was walking away.
"Ruth," he called after her, "listen, wait a minute."
The door closed after her. Basine stood watching the door. She would open it and come back. But the door remained shut. He seated himself at his desk. Moments passed and he was surprised to wake up and hear himself mumbling. "The dirty skunk! I'll wring his neck!"
She had given herself to Schroder! Not married him.... The part he had played in her ruin forced itself with a nauseating insistency into Basine's mind. His memories seized him. He struggled, but the things he knew leaped out of hiding-places and assaulted him. She had loved him. And he had loved her. Life had seemed marvelous with her close to him. His career, his day, its simplest detail, had been colored with delicious excitement. But he had been afraid to reach out and take what he wanted. It would have meant success, happiness and something else—the word beauty withheld itself—it would have meant these things. But he had feared possession. He had let her go away after kissing her and telling her that he loved her. So she had gone walking in the street and fallen into the arms of the first man she met. It was plain.
Basine writhed under triumphant accusations. A torment filled him. He must escape from the accusations He pried himself away from his thoughts and took his place on the bench. Other people's troubles again. Disputes, wrangles, testimonies—his ears listened mechanically. Lawyers were pleading with him. Witnesses were stammering. He sat with a scowl and hunched forward in his chair. His lean face thrust itself at the courtroom.
Thoughts too intolerable for his attention whirled sickeningly in a background. Pictures of Ruth in the man's arms, of her surrender, of the intimacies of their illicit affair forced themselves upon him. He loved her. "Oh, damn him," sang itself darkly through his heart.
There was one mocking intruder that raised a vociferous head. "You might have had her. Not he. She might have been yours if you hadn't been afraid." It was this that nauseated most. Not Schroder's villainy, but his own cowardice. He had lost through cowardice.