He went out again into the dusk immediately. Dutch shops are open late, especially on Saturdays. He walked quickly to the High Street, which was full of movement and yellow gas. At a well-known bookseller’s he stopped.
“Have you Maupassant’s Une Vie?” he asked the shopman. Oh yes! half a dozen copies lay on the counter. He carried off the blue paper volume, and locked himself up in his rooms.
Turning the pages hurriedly, he read the painful story. Even as he read, he revolted at the thought of his cousin’s having come into contact with such scenes as were there described. He flung the book on to the table. “Filth!” he said, angrily. He felt that a woman’s soul may pass pure, if such be her terrible fate, through fact, but not through fiction. And surely he was right. A man can judge of purity, in women.
The work he admiringly despised was like all those of its great author, though by no means equal, of course, in literary value, to his shorter masterpieces. It was a perfectly polished crystal goblet—a splendor of workmanship—full of asafœtida. Few men care for the taste, which might be healthful, but we all enjoy the useless smell.
Somebody whistled outside in the street. He went to the window. Two young officers, attracted by the light of his lamp, stood in the dark with upturned faces. His heart leaped with its impulse of relief.
“Is that you, Troy?” he called back. “Who’s with you? Never mind, I’ll come down. I say, there’s a night-train to Brussels! We’ve just time to catch it. The chief’ll never know, and we’ll have such a burst-up as never was before!”
On the Monday morning in the small hours Gerard returned from his escapade into Belgium. The others, who still valued their commissions, had refused to accompany him. He had left a telegram with Willie for the Horst, to the effect that Helena was unable to come. “The Colonel won’t be any wiser,” he said. And the Colonel never was.
Whether the excursion had been worth its cost—in every sense—was another matter. Such questions are useless, and Gerard preferred not to decide them. He lay down on his bed for a couple of hours, and then—before breakfast, somewhere near seven o’clock—he paid a visit to a lady of his acquaintance whom he had not seen for many months. He had a bad headache, and he felt deeply injured, but also distinctly inclined to indignation and virtue.