There are half a dozen girls in the box, a bevy of beauties, and I buy a case of wine for each, over a thousand dollars' worth. Screaming with laughter they toss it in bottles down to their friends in the audience. It is a scene of riotous excitement. The audience roars, the girls shriek, the orchestra tries to make itself heard. Madder and madder grows the merriment. The fierce fever of it scorches in my veins. I am mad to spend, to throw away money, to outdo all others in bitter, reckless prodigality. I fling twenty-dollar gold pieces to the singers. I open bottle after bottle of wine. The girls are spraying the crowd with it, the floor of the box swims with it. I drop my pencil signing a tab, and when I look down it is floating in a pool of champagne.
Then comes the last. The dance has begun. Men in fur caps, mackinaw coats and mucklucks are waltzing with women clad in Paris gowns and sparkling with jewels. The floor is thronged. I have a large, hundred-ounce poke of dust, and I unloose the thong. Suddenly with a mad shout I scatter its contents round the hall. Like a shower of golden rain it falls on men and women alike. See how they grovel for it, the brutes, the vampires! How they fight and grab and sprawl over it! How they shriek and howl and curse! It is like an arena of wild beasts; it is pandemonium. Oh, how I despise them! My gorge rises, but—to the end, to the end. I must play my part.
Always amid that lurid carnival of sin floats the figure of Blossom, Blossom with her child-face of dazzling fairness, her china-blue eyes, her round, smooth cheeks. How different from the pinched pallid face of Berna! Poor, poor Berna! I never see her, but amid all the saturnalia she haunts me. The thought of her is agony, agony. I cannot bear to think of her. I know she watches me. If she would only stoop and save me now! Or have I not fallen low enough? What a faith I have in that deep mother-love of hers that will redeem me in the end. I must go deeper yet. Faster and faster must I swirl into the vortex.
Oh, these women, how in my heart I loathe them! I laugh with them, I quaff with them, I let them rob me; but that's all.
In all that fierce madness of debauch, thank God, I retained my honour. They beguiled me, they tried to lure me into their rooms; but at the moment I went to enter I recoiled. It was as if an invisible arm stretched across the doorway and barred me out.
And Blossom, she, too, tried so hard to lure me, and because I resisted it inflamed her. Half angel, half devil was Blossom, a girl in years, but woefully wise, a soft siren when pleased, a she-devil when roused. She made me her special quarry. She fought for me. She drove off all the other girls. We talked together, we drank together, we "played the tables" together, but nothing more. She would coax me with the prettiest gestures, and cajole me with the sweetest endearments; then, when I steadfastly resisted her, she would fly into a fury and flout me with the foulness of the stews. She was beautiful, but born to be bad. No power on heaven or earth could have saved her. Yet in her badness she was frank, natural and untroubled as a child.
It was in one of the corridors of the dance-hall in the early hours of the morning. The place was deserted, strewed with débris of the night's debauch. The air was fetid, and from the gambling-hall down below arose the shouts of the players. We were up there, Blossom and I. I was in a strange state of mind, a state bordering on frenzy. Not much longer, I felt, could I keep up this pace. Something had to happen, and that soon.
She put her arms around me. I could feel her cheek pressed to mine. I could see her bosom rise and fall.