I confess to looking at her with the wonder whether it was religion or the lack of l. s. d.
“Ah!” she said. “You don’t understand; you think I am afraid of poverty with him. No! I am afraid of losing my soul, and his.”
The way she said that was extraordinarily impressive. I asked her if she saw him.
“Yes; he comes. I have to let him. I cannot bear the look on his face when I say ‘No.’” She gave me his address.
He had a garret in a little Greek hotel, just above Galata—a ramshackle place, chosen for its cheapness. He did not seem surprised to see me. But I was startled. His face, shrunken and lined, had a bitter, burnt-up look, which deepened the set and colour of his eyes till they looked almost black. A long bout of disease will produce just that effect.
“If she didn’t love me,” he said, “I could bear it. But she does. Well! So long as I can see her I shall stand it; and she’ll come—she’ll come to me at last.”
I repeated her words to me; I spoke of his wife, of England—no memory, no allusion, no appeal touched him.
I stayed a month and saw him nearly every day; I did not move him by one jot. At the end of that month I should never have known him for the Frank Weymouth who had started out with us from Mena House on New Year’s Day. Changed! He was! I had managed to get him a teaching job through a man I knew at the Embassy—a poor enough job—a bare subsistence. And, watching my friend day by day, I began to have a feeling of hatred for that woman. Yet I knew that her refusal to indulge their passion was truly religious. She really did see her lost soul and his, whirling entwined through purgatory, like the souls of Paola and Francesca in Watts’ picture. Call it superstition, or what you will, her scruples were entirely genuine, and, from a certain point of view, quite laudable.
As for Radolin, he took it all precisely as if there were nothing to take; smooth and debonair as ever—a little harder about the mouth and eyes, and that was all.
The morning before I went home I made my way once more up the evil-smelling stairs to my friend’s garret. He was standing at the window, looking down over the bridge—that tragic bridge of Galata where the blind and halt used to trade, perhaps still trade, the sight of their misfortunes. We stood there side by side.