He wanted to gag her so that she would hear him out for once and not break into every phrase. He wanted to tell her for her own good in one clear, cold, logical, unbroken harangue how atrocious she was, how futile, fiendish, heartless. But he knew that she would not listen to him. Even if he gagged her mouth her mind would still dodge and buffet him. How ancient was the experience that warned a man against argument with a woman! And that wise old saw, "Let sleeping dogs lie," referred even better to wives. He would not let her know that he was awake—awake, perhaps, for hours of misery.
This had happened often of late. It had been a hard week, day after day of bitter toil wearing him down in body and fraying his every nerve.
His business was in a bad way, and he alone could save it, and he could save it only by ingenuity and inspiration. But the inspiration, he was sure, would not come to him till he could rest throughout.
Sleep was his hope, his passion, food, drink, medicine. He was heavily pledged at the bank. He could borrow no more. The president had threatened him if he did not pay what was overdue. Bigger businesses than his were being left to crash. A financial earthquake was rocking every tower in the world.
Though he needed cash vitally to further his business, there was a sharper and sharper demand upon him from creditors desperately harried by their own desperate creditors. He must find with his brain some new source of cash. He must fight the world. But how could he fight without rest? Even pugilists rested between rounds.
He had not slept a whole night for a week. To-night he had gone to bed sternly resolved on a while of annihilation. Anything for the brief sweet death with the morning of resurrection.
And then she had quarreled with him. And now he was awake, and he felt that he would not sleep.
He wondered what the hour was. He was tempted to rise and make a light and look at his watch, but he felt that the effort and the blow of the glare on his eyes might confirm his insomnia. He lay and wondered, consumed with curiosity as to the hour—as if that knowledge could be of value.
By and by, out of the stillness and the widespread black came the slumbrous tone of a far-off town clock. Three times it rumored in the air as if distance moaned faintly thrice.
Three o'clock! He had had but two hours' sleep, and would have no more! And he needed ten! To-morrow morning—this morning!—he must join battle for his very existence.