He said, half aloud, to himself:
"I can't go on this way. This is damn foolish! I've got to find out where it's landing me. It will land her, too—somewhere. I'd better keep away from her, go off somewhere, get out, stop seeing her, stop remembering her!—if she's what I think she is."
Scowling, he went to the window and jerked aside the curtain. Across the street, the Olympian Club sparkled with electricity.
"Good Lord!" he muttered. "What a tempest in a teapot! What the devil's the matter with me? Can't I kiss a girl now and then and keep my senses?"
It seemed that he couldn't, in the present instance, for after he had bitten the amber stem of his pipe clean through, he threw the bowl into the fireplace. It had taken him two years to colour it.
"Idiot!" he said aloud. "What are you sorry about? You know damn well there are only two kinds of women, and it's up to them what sort they are—not up to any man who ever lived! What are you sorry for? For her?"
He stared across the street at the Olympian Club. He was expected there.
"If she only wasn't so—so expressionless and—silent about it. It's like killing something that lets you do it. That's a crazy thing to think of!"
Suddenly he found he had a fight on his hands. He had never had one like it; didn't know exactly what to do, except to repeat over and over: