"My God!" he faltered, springing to his feet. "What's the matter with you? Why do you care? You can't care! What is it to you that a drunken beast slinks back into hell again? Do you think you are Samaritan enough to follow him and try to drag him out by the ears?… A man whose very brain is already cracking with it all—a burnt-out thing with neither mind nor manhood left—"
She got to her feet, trembling and deathly white.
"I can't let you go," she whispered.
Exasperation almost strangled him and set afire his unhinged brain.
"For Christ's sake!" he cried. "What do you care?"
"I—I care," she stammered—"for Christ's sake … And yours!"
Things went dark before her eyes…. She opened them after a while on the sofa where he had carried her. He was standing looking down at her. … After a long while the ghost of a smile touched her lips. In his haunted gaze there was no response. But he said in an altered, unfamiliar voice: "I'll go if you say so. I'll do all that's in me to do. … Will you be there—for the first day or two?"
"Yes…. All day long…. Every day if you want me. Do you?"
"Yes…. But God knows what I may do to you…. There'll be somebody to—watch me—won't there?… I don't know what may happen to you or to myself…. I'm in a bad way, Miss Erith… I'm in a very bad way."
"I know," she murmured.