ALICE."
He struck his forehead like a man who awakens from an obscene dream.
Where was his mind? He was about to go in search of that which was so close at hand, so richly his own!
Where else in all the world could he find a woman so exquisitely tempered to his needs, so intimately responsive to his desires, one who would lead him into the darker land of matrimony through meadows of laughing flowers?
To be sure, there was her coolness of temper, her learning, her strange restlessness. But was not all that undergoing a change? Had he not found her sunk in dreams? And her tears? And her kiss?
Ungrateful wretch that he was!
He had sought a home and not thought of the parrot who screamed out his name in her dear dwelling. There was a parrot like that in the world—and he wandered foolishly abroad. What madness! What baseness!
He would go to her at once.
But no! A merry thought struck him and a healing one.
He took the key from the wall and put it into his pocket.