He made an effort, took a long breath, and opened his eyes.
“You still here?” he said, frowning.
She nodded.
“Why do you follow me like this?” he said peevishly.
“Because I care what happens to you.”
“That is ridiculous!” he said loudly.
He stared a moment at her with his wild-animal stare, and, all at once, as though he had found a way to get rid of her, started down Eighth Avenue. They arrived at Columbus Circle with the first muddied grays of the dawn creeping in above the whitening electric signs, then passed under the elevated as a train shrieked and roared above them in its burning flight. A touring car went whirring past them, defiant of speed-laws, skidded dangerously, righting itself, and disappeared.
Scavengers were already turning over the refuse in waiting ash-cans, as they struck into a side street and stopped before an iron grill under the colored electric sign, “Mantell’s.” A little man with ratty eyes and black wisps of hair streaking the bald dome of his head, shuffled to the gate and squinted at them cautiously before slipping the chain.
The low rooms were swept with drifting gray-blue smoke clouds, upholstered benches were against the walls, where oldish women, worn with the fatigue of the night, were smiling their red smiles at fatuous youngsters. Three or four foreign-looking groups, swarthy men with enormous women, were in corners placidly engaged in their own affairs as though this were the most respectable of family resorts. A mechanical piano in a further room drummed out hideous dance-music to swirling groups in frank abandon. Dangerfield was no longer conscious of anything but an angry determination to revolt, to be free of all encumbrance. It seemed to his fuddled imagination that it was no longer Inga at his side but something strangely akin to his conscience, defiantly pursuing him out of the past of his youth and illusions, malignantly and maliciously clinging to him. Somehow, somewhere, he must rid himself of this impossible burden, crush it down, and cast it aside.