“That is certain.”
“If so—why, then, don’t they put it in rent again?” said Mr. Cornelius, shaking his head. Nothing could convince him that an attempted burglary had not taken place. In fact, he confided the fact that he had several times had a suspicion that attempts had taken place before.
To Dangerfield, the proof seemed slight—what was there in the denuded room to entice a thief? But, in order to humor the old fellow, he nodded wisely and promised to aid him with a careful search on the morrow.
He left him and went back to his room, but the tyranny of insomnia still holding him, he changed into slippers, opened the door and, in an effort at physical fatigue, began to walk the long murky corridor. Alone, in his mechanical journey, back and forth, along the creaky way, wheeling at the same points so mechanically that he fell to counting his steps, he saw all at once, under the door of Inga’s room, a tiny ray of light come out. She was there, awake; she had heard him—was waiting, perhaps, wrung by the same torture which dominated him, feeling the same ache of separation. She was there—waiting!
His imagination began to whirl again. He had an impulse to break through things, to fling obstacles aside, to hurl down all that intervened; and yet he hesitated. A dozen times he approached the door in an angry revulsion against his self-imposed test, and a dozen times passed on. Once he stopped, leaning against the wall, staring at the knob, which seemed to turn under his eyes. She was there, she must be there, waiting miserably. The sensation was so acute that he felt her living, breathing presence on the other side of the door, her hand waiting on the knob that seemed to turn under his eyes! And yet he went away and continued up and down the hall, staring at the same points, counting the steps—up and down—until the sickly dawn flowed in like an inundation, and still the crack under her door shone like the blazing edge of a sword blade....
The next afternoon, his model dismissed in despair, Dangerfield sat, head in his hands, staring at the meaningless canvas. He could not work. He had not worked since the day he had sent Inga out of his life.
The drag of sleepless hours lay on him, and the profound void of the victory he had won in the long marches of the night. Sitting there, in graven silence, he asked himself:
“Why didn’t I go in?”
And when he had put the question to himself again and again, he understood. He had not yielded, because the need of the inspiration of a great love in his life was deeper than his need of love itself, because in the fulness of his maturity he comprehended that, in his artist’s ideality, only a love that meant aspiration and veneration could restore life to him, and that this love he must protect and hold sacred even against itself.