He yielded to her entreating arms and eyes, as he had so often before in like moments, when the need to put aside the consciousness of existence, of the world as it appears, had come to one of them or both. Yet it seemed that this love was like some potent spirit, whose irresistible power waned, sank, each time demanding a larger draught of joy, a more delirious tension of the nerves.
"Nothing makes any difference," he answered. "I was born and lived for this."
She had charmed the evil mood, and for the time her heart was satisfied.
But when she lay by his side at night her arm stole about his, as if to clutch him, fearful lest in the empty reaches of sleep he might escape, lest his errant man's thoughts and desires might abandon her for the usual avenues of life. Long after he had fallen into the regular sleep of night, she lay awake by his side, her eyes glittering with passion and defeat. Even in these limits of life, when the whole world was banned, it seemed impossible to hold undisturbed one's joy. In the loneliest island of the human sea it would be thus—division and ultimate isolation.
CHAPTER VI
The summer burned itself out, and the autumn winds pierced the rotten staff walls of the temple. They were no nearer to moving into better quarters than they had been in the spring. The days had come when there was little food, and the last precarious dollar had been spent. They lived on the edge of defeat, and such an existence to earnest people is sombre.
Finally the tide turned. The manager of a large manufacturing plant in Burnside, one of the little factory hamlets south of the city, asked Sommers to take charge of an epidemic of typhoid that had broken out among the operatives. The regular physician of the corporation had proved incompetent, and the annual visitation of the disease threatened to be unprecedented. Sommers spent his days and nights in Burnside for several weeks. When he had time to think, he wondered why the manager employed him. If the Hitchcocks had been in the city, he should have suspected that they had a hand in the matter. But he remembered having seen in a newspaper some months before that the Hitchcocks were leaving for Europe. He did not trouble himself greatly, however, over the source of the gift, thankful enough for the respite, and for the chance of renewed activity. When the time for settlement came, the manager liberally increased the amount of the doctor's modest bill. The check for three hundred dollars seemed a very substantial bulwark against distress, and the promise of the company's medical work after the new year was even more hopeful. Alves was eager to move from the dilapidated temple to an apartment where Sommers could have a suitable office. But Sommers objected, partly from prudential reasons, partly from fear that unpleasant things might happen to Alves, should they come again where people could talk. And then, to Alves's perplexity, he developed strange ideas about money getting.
"The physician should receive the very minimum of pay possible for his existence," he told her once, when she talked of the increase in his income. "He works in the dark, and he is in luck if he happens to do any good. In waging his battle with mysterious nature, he only unfits himself by seeking gain. In the same way, to a lesser degree, the law and the ministry should not be gainful professions. When the question of personal gain and advancement comes in, the frail human being succumbs to selfishness, and then to error. Like the artist, the doctor, the lawyer, the clergyman, the teacher should be content to minister to human needs. The professions should be great monastic orders, reserved for those who have the strength to renounce ease and luxury and power."
The only tangible comfort that Alves derived from this unusually didactic speech was the assurance that he would not be drawn away from her. She bowed to his conception, and sought to help him. While he was attending the cases in Burnside, she did some work as nurse. Beginning casually to help on an urgent case, she went on to other cases, training herself, learning to take his place wherever she could. She thought to come closer to him in this way, but she suspected that he understood her motive, that her work did not seem quite sincere to him. She was looking for payment in love.
When she was not engaged in nursing, she was more often alone than she had been the year before. The Keystone people visited the temple rarely. Miss M'Gann seemed always a little constrained, when Alves met her, and Dresser was living on the North Side. One December morning, when Alves was alone, she noticed a carriage coming slowly down the unfinished avenue. It stopped a little distance from the temple, and a woman got out. After giving the coachman an order, she took the foot-path that Alves and Sommers had worn. Alves came out to the portico to meet the stranger, who hastened her leisurely pace on catching sight of a person in the temple. At the foot of the rickety steps the stranger stopped.