At other times, he would fix his dull glance on her and say, without kindness:
“See what you’ve dragged me back to!”
These were the secret black hours, when he lay in stupor after periods of heavy, obstinate drinking. For something had come which frightened him. He had boasted, in the wild days when he was new to the Arcade, that he did what he did because he wanted to do it, proclaiming scornfully that he could stop it whenever he chose. And, in his pride, he believed this. Now he came to the frightened realization that this was no longer true, and that there lay before him a struggle against a dark and shapeless enemy which filled the day with its crushing shadow.
At first, he deluded himself with the thought that he was seeking relief, a numbed forgetfulness out of the vacant world—that it was his right to escape the depression in his soul, and that this seeking was deliberate. This delusion was the stronger in that he believed he was testing the girl, challenging her right to reclaim him by a last obstinate rebellion. But Inga, neither by word nor expression, made the slightest criticism. This patient acquiescence, this mute devotion that followed where he went and watched the inevitable moment when he called her in his weakness, at first surprised him and then awoke his latent chivalry.
The day came when, in remorse, he turned to take up the fight himself. Then he found that the dark companion that he had called upon so often to shut out the aching reality could no longer be thrown aside, that, instead of a servant, he had found a master. He found himself gripped in with a hunger he had not realized. At times, frightened, he recoiled and sought to struggle, as though his body were sinking into a lurking quicksand that drew him down, down, and ever down.
There was yet a darker thing which hung shapelessly in this gradually settling obscurity, a thing of dread that waited beside the other shadowy comforter. For, at times, he came struggling back to life with a feeling of blurred, vacant spaces behind, where something had slipped from him, when he had been but a shell inhabited by muddled desires and gropings.
These were days of rough going, of tense straining on every nerve of the girl who watched him. Strange, opposite flashes, the sublime and the ridiculous of the man’s soul, shifted and whirled before her. At times, from long periods of inner torment, there came a sudden pitch of exaltation, wild, colorful moments of eloquence, when he discoursed on life and art, justice and morality, when he analyzed mercilessly established prejudices and beat through to a clearer verity—when she listened breathlessly, enthralled at his dramatic tossings. Then, when the prophetic rage had passed in its fine fury, the reaction would come, and for hours he would lie clinging to her hand, shuddering in the dark at terrors he did not dare to phrase. These moments of groping weakness, of intermingled bombast, wisdom, and cringing brought her always to the same impasse—either she must instil some object into this denial of life, or see him slowly crumble, morally and physically, before her eyes.