“Yes. I promise.”
And he kept the promise.
THE POISONED CHAI
Bernstein sat in the furthest corner of the café, brooding. The fiercest torments that plague the human heart were rioting within him, as if they would tear him asunder. Bernstein was of an impulsive, overbearing nature, mature as far as years went, yet with the untrained, inexperienced emotions of a savage. To such natures the “no” from a woman’s lips comes like a blow; the sudden knowledge that those same lips can smile brightly upon another follows like molten lead.
That whole afternoon Bernstein had suffered the wildest tortures of jealousy. Had Natzi been a younger man Bernstein’s resentment might not have turned so hotly upon him. Yet Natzi was almost of his own age, a weak-faced creature, with an eternal smile, incapable of intense feeling, ignorant of even the faintest shade of that passion which he (Bernstein) had laid so humbly, so tenderly at her feet—and it was Natzi she loved! Bernstein’s hand darted to his inner pocket and came forth clutching a tiny object upon which he gazed with the look of a fiend.
“I may not have her,” he murmured, “but she will never belong to him.”
He held the tiny thing in his lap, below the level of the table, so that none other might see it, and looked at it intently. It was a small phial; it contained some colourless liquid.
The thought entered his brain to drain the contents of that phial himself and put an end to the fierce pain that was eating away his heart. Would it not be for the best? There was no one to care. The world held no one but her; perhaps his death would bring the tears to those big brown eyes; she might even come and kiss his cold forehead. But after that Natzi would be master of those kisses, upon Natzi’s lips hers would be pressed all the livelong day.
The blood surged to his brain; he clutched the table as though he would squeeze the wood to pulp; before his eyes rose a mist—a red mist—the red of blood. Slowly this mist cleared away, and the face and form of Natzi loomed up before him—Natzi, with patient, boyish eyes, smiling.
“It is the third time that I’ve said ‘Good-evening.’ Have you been sleeping with your eyes open?”