She slipped away from him. He went out. She groped toward the door; where was it? She was blind; then she fell.
3
Martin entered his hotel; it was past twelve. The night orgy had commenced. He passed through the room thronged with dancers, his coat buttoned up to his neck, his soft hat drawn over his eyes; stood a moment looking on, a strange silent figure out of place in that decorative humanity.
He sat by the open window in his room; the noise from below was deadened by space into a soft humming sound. Waves of icy air enveloped him. He was unconscious of cold or heat. In the flash of a moment, life had taken on a different aspect; his entire being was one great pulsation. Floyd—the difficulties before him, the dishonor of it, came faintly from a distant perspective, but he thrust it fiercely behind him. The woman filled the world for him; he lived over and over that moment of tearing joy, her face transfigured with passion, her lips, her tears, the pressure of her body against his—a statue come to life, for him alone. He had been tricked out of his happiness by her mother—but now all the powers of Hell couldn’t keep him away from her.
A restless night fixed his resolve. He knew exactly what he was going to do. He dressed more slowly than usual, moving about in a kind of hushed manner; he was no longer alone; she was there, clinging to him. He jumped into a taxi and drove down to Twelfth Street. The shades were lowered in the Garrison house. Next door the wreckers had been clearing away the debris; there was now a large open space where his home had been. The Italian foreman came up to him, speaking in his pleasant broken English.
“A good job, eh? Everything gone, clean as a whistle. Tomorrow we commence to build.”
Martin opened the gate of the Garrison house; as he stood at the door, his hand on the knocker, he had a feeling of being mentally unstrung. Criminologists say when thieves go to commit a crime they are sustained by a strong sense of fatality, a fixed idea that it must be; they are drawn into the vortex of crime by an irresistible fascination—the lure of adventure, the justification of the equality of human rights, the spoils, the gambler’s risk. Martin felt vaguely all this; a sense of excitement stimulated him, like strong liquor. He caught his breath as he entered the room he had left the night before. She was coming to him again; now he would be the first to take her in his arms, to hold her until she would consent to go with him; he would have to coax, perhaps to threaten. He set his teeth; he had decided; it must be or he would kill himself and her.
The door opened; he turned with a smile. Floyd stood there, very pale.
“Julie is not well. When I came back last night, I found her lying unconscious on the ground. Did she complain to you?”
“No.”