Exploring the alley alone, I penetrated to the hooded stairs atop which Jerry had greeted me. Now an old wigged woman, crippled and fluent of Yiddish, kept vigil there.
I sought Leventhal, the lessor of my Erasmus garb cast off in that shed and never recovered. I came offering cash to pay for the robe. He took the money, shaking his head; he would remember neither the robe nor me. There was no tracing, through him, of others who wore his clothes that night. They were vanished like Villon’s lovers:
Alas for lovers! Pair by pair
The wind has blown them all away;
The young and yare, the fond and fair,
Where are the Snows of Yesterday?
Young and yare; that was Cleopatra! Where was she? Who was she? More than who, whose might she be? Well, what good for me to wonder and worry? What good to feel, by remembrance, the softness of her hand in mine when we danced; and then the iron warning of her fingers on my wrist! What good to see in mind the beauty of her shoulder and the smallness of her foot. They were gone, all gone; and, if I looked at the whole business sensibly, I would see that somehow, in ways not yet entirely clear, I had been of service in the game of getting for Christina and her man insurance of five hundred thousand with which they had got away; or he had, after taking it from her.