"You're a prince, John," Rodrigo said sincerely. "But you shouldn't have done it. You should have let me face the music." He turned almost fiercely and paced the floor a moment. Returning, he faced John and cried, "I don't know why you have such a sublime faith in me, John. God knows I've given you no reason for it. I was in trouble when you first met me. And that wasn't the first time, as you must have known. And yet you accepted me as a friend and you gave me a start that's resulted in the happiest time of my life. Now, damn it, I throw you down again. I guess I'm just bad."
John laid his hand on the Italian's shoulder. "No, I won't have you condemning yourself. You've been strictly business since you've been over here, I know. This Binner affair is a carry-over from the past. Your letters didn't mean anything, even though they sounded pretty intimate. And that episode in her apartment was just a peculiar combination of circumstances, I can see that."
"Oh, don't make me out a saint, John," Rodrigo cried impatiently. "If those crooks in the hall hadn't jolted it out of my head—oh, well, what's the use. Once a weakling, always a weakling."
"Not at all," John retorted. "I'll admit there's one kink in your character I don't understand. I don't see why a chap who is as unselfish, straightforward and worldly wise as you are, can—well, make a fool out of himself with a certain type of woman. It's uncanny."
"It's in my blood. I'll never be able to be absolutely sure of myself," Rodrigo flung out hopelessly. His hands were nervously fingering the table against which he was leaning. He was thinking neither of Sophie nor of Rodrigo. He was seeing the white, disappointed face of Mary Drake, and he knew now what had been troubling her. It did not occur to him to be thrilled that she should care enough about him to be troubled. He was afraid, afraid for his love and his happiness, because he was his own worst enemy. His nervous, groping fingers closed upon a marble figurine, an exquisite carving of a hooded cobra, head raised and ready to strike at a tiger. The tiger, about to spring, had paused and stood, eyes upon the snake, as if fascinated. It was among his art treasures that he had brought from Italy.
"You'll be sure of yourself," John was saying, "when the right girl comes along." He smiled, and Rodrigo realized with a pang that John was thinking of his right girl, Elise Van Zile.
"What chance will I ever have with the right sort of girl when the wrong sort may come along first?" And Rodrigo too was thinking of Elise. He suddenly realized that his fingers were digging into something hard until they hurt. He looked down at the figurine, and lifted it.
"Here I am!" he cried. "I'm this tiger! I never told you why I brought this figurine with me, why I've always cherished it, have I? Well, one reason is because my father gave it to me when I was a boy as the memento of a very exciting afternoon. It happened in India when I was about fourteen years old. We were riding on an elephant, and we could see over a high wall into a sort of a lane that led to an enclosure where a chap who used to make a business of capturing wild animals for museums and circuses kept his stock. He let the beasts roam around in there, and my father would take me to the other side of the wall to see them.
"Well, on this afternoon, a big, silky tiger came walking down the lane. Suddenly, when he was just about opposite us, he stopped short—like this statue—his head down. He stared at something. We followed his shining eyes. A cobra had slipped out of the box in which the chap kept his snakes. The tiger stared as if paralyzed, fascinated, a yard from the snake's head. A cobra! That's the wrong kind of a girl—a cobra. Mind you, this tiger could have killed the thing with one blow of his paw. He could have killed a lion, or scattered a regiment. Yet he stood there, his eyes held by the eyes of the cobra. All at once he tossed his head up and took a step backward—and the cobra struck."
"Struck! Did he kill the tiger?"