He went into a cheap lodging-house and paid for a room. The place was frowzy and ill-smelling, but he did not care. He threw himself upon the bed. The dreamlike quality of what had transpired still persisted. He had added another rôle to the drama, that of physician. He had been the murderer, the spectator, the physician. But he could not get under the skin of the victim. He seemed to be able to recall every detail but her face—the blue-green dress, the black-lace shawl, the white tapering arm upraised as she flicked the end of his nose. It was then, as the murderer, he had pulled the trigger.... In the rôle of frightened spectator he had walked out of the hotel.... As physician he had remembered his duty and chided himself.... He took a cigarette from his pocket and began to smoke. He lay there for hours, thinking, thinking. But he could not see the victim's face....
Suddenly toward morning he sat up.
"Ah, I have it! The woman was Claire.... Yes, it is Claire who is dead!..."
He fell back with the satisfaction of one who has solved an irritating puzzle.
He awoke at noon. He was neither surprised nor dazed at finding himself in a strange environment. Sleep had settled all the dust-clouds of thought. He remembered everything perfectly. He was a murderer, and he had killed a woman because he had not been wise or prudent enough to content himself with the fruits of a tempered, frugal passion. He did not rouse himself. He had no wish except to lie still and think.
Looking back, he could see that he always had felt uncertain about Claire. Somehow she was not altogether a virginal type. She was a woman who, lacking any concrete experiences, would mentally create stimulating situations. Even now he admired her, but love was mysteriously killed. Yet he had loved her last night! And never so ardently, so completely as at that moment when he had brought his pistol upon a level with her lips and done his worst.
But this morning he seemed swept clean of all feeling, love and hate and enthusiasm, every sensation killed utterly—dead! Could it be possible that Claire Robson had absorbed every hope, every expectation, making of them a living thing in her own image that died with her? Had she betrayed not only him, but all his visions? What had become of the far-flung horizons which he had always seen so clearly? One black cloud had eclipsed them all.
He remembered the serene blueness of the day on which that black cloud had sprung out of the south, a misty-white fledgling of the sky that grew with the hours until the sun was wrapped in a dull gloom. How quickly Mrs. Condor's words had expanded and drawn every drifting rumor to their confirmation! He had heard it all—everything. It amazed him to discover how easily the truth was uncovered. Uncovered? No, it had lacked even the virtue of concealment; it lay, noxious and festering and unscreened, a rich feast for the scandalmongers circling vulture-like above. But his flight toward happiness had been like the eagle's, too swift and lofty and disdainful for such unlovely sights; eagerly, blindly he had passed them by. He recalled with a shudder the morning that he had gone and bought the pistol. This he had intended for Stillman. But the very thought of it had cut him to the heart. It was only when he had reflected on that million dollars for the Serbian cause that he found himself submerged in bitterness. This was the crowning insult, the culminating deception! The wage of Claire Robson's shame offered in the guise of a free gift! No wonder that the donor withheld his name!
"In my country it is all very simple—we call the man out and shoot him!"