"I had a thousand curiosities about her. I'd have found out anything I could. But it was she who did the finding out. Beyond inquiring about you, how lately I'd seen you, and so on, she hardly asked a question; talked about indifferent things: New York, the theaters, how we passed the time out here, I don't know what. But pretty soon I saw that she understood me, saw right into me like through an open window into a lighted room. As easily as that. She knew what was the matter with me; knew what I'd made of myself. And by God, Aldrich, she didn't even despise me!
"I came back here to kick this damned thing to pieces, give myself a fresh start. And when I got here, I hadn't the sand. I get drunk instead."
He poured himself another long drink and sipped it slowly. "Everybody knows," he said at last, "that prostitutes almost invariably take to drugs or drink. But I know why they do."
That remark stung Rodney out of his long silence. During the whole of Randolph's recital of his encounter with Rose, he'd never once lifted his eyes from the gray ash of his cigar, and the violet filament of smoke that arose from it. He didn't want to look at Randolph, nor think about him. Just wanted to remember every word he said, so that he could carry the picture away intact. Now that the picture was finished, he wanted to get out of that room, with it; out into the dark and loneliness of the streets, where he could walk and think.
There was something peculiarly horrifying to him in the exhibition Randolph was making of himself. He'd never in his life taken a drink, except convivially, and then he took as little as would pass muster. He'd always found it hard to be sensibly tolerant of the things men said and did in liquor, even when their condition had overtaken them unawares. Going off alone and deliberately fuddling one's self as a means of escaping unpleasant realities, struck him as an act of the basest cowardice. Whether Randolph's revelation of himself were true or distorted by alcohol, didn't seem much to matter. But for that picture of Rose, he'd have gone long ago and left the man to his bemused reflections. Only ...
He'd said that Rose understood everything and didn't despise him. A drunken fancy likely enough. She had seen something though. Her letter proved that. And having seen it, she'd asked him to drop in on the doctor for a visit. Did she mean she wanted him to try to help?
He tried, though not very successfully, to conceal his violent disrelish of the task, when he said:
"Look here, Jim! What the devil is the matter with you? Are you sober enough to tell me?"
Randolph put down his glass. "I have told you," he said. "It's a thing that can be told in one word. I'm a prostitute. I'm Eleanor's kept man. Well kept, oh, yes. Beautifully kept. I'm nothing in God's world but a possession of hers! A trophy of sorts, an ornament. I'm something she's made. I have a hell of a big practise. I'm the most fashionable doctor in Chicago. They come here, the women, damn them, in shoals. That's Eleanor's doing. I'm a faker, a fraud, a damned actor. I pose for them. I play up. I give them what they want. And that's her doing. They go silly about me; fancy they're in love with me. That's what she wants them to do. It increases my value for her as a possession.
"I haven't done a lick of honest work in the last year. I can't work. She won't let me work. She—smothers me. Wherever I turn, there she is, smoothing things out, trying to making it easy, trying to anticipate my wants. I've only one want. That's to be let alone. She can't do that. She's insatiable. She can't help it. There's something drives her on so that she never can feel sure that she possesses me completely enough. There's always something more she's trying to get, and I'm always trying to keep something away from her, and failing.