He was speaking, I have realized since, with some physical effort; but his mind was steady enough. He seemed to be simply making the best of it, since he had been unable to keep me out by force.
“He is not likely to be up and about before the morning?” said I.
“He is certain not to. But they stopped selling him liquor this afternoon. I learned that from the manager. So he will be nervous to-morrow. And probably dangerous. Undoubtedly dangerous.” His eyes flitted about the room, and then I saw that his baggage, all packed excepting one bag, was still there. “So I will leave him to you. I take the Tientsin train early to-morrow. And alone, I regret to add.”
This stung, but I held myself in control.
“I had hopes that the lady would leave with me,” he added. “I would have done very well by her. Extravagantly well. For she is, I may say, a person of unusual charm. But now, of course, that you are openly paying her bills, I leave the field to you.”
I kept my hands close at my sides, and stood straight there before him.
“I gave you some advice the other day, my boy,” he continued. “Bear it in mind. The woman is helpless. I confess I don't see what on earth she can do. For she is a highly impractical little thing She has very little idea of the value of money. I offered more than I had any business to—offered to send her back to Europe and help her along with her studies. It seemed the only way to reach her, don't you know—the line of her ambition, and therefore her weakest point. I used all the familiar arguments. And God knows most of them are true enough—that private morality is of no consequence in an operatic career, that a woman need conform to suburban standards only if she is seeking a suburban success. I pointed out notorious episodes in the lives of great women performers whom we all admire, women of unquestioned position. But do you know, my boy, not one of these arguments appeared to reach her at all. She is to me, I must say, an extraordinary contradiction. Here she is, deserted and destitute on the China Coast, where a woman can not travel alone for a day without advertising herself as a marketable commodity; and yet, so far as I can see, she is, in a sense, a good woman. Really, it was n't until I pointed out the wreckage she was making of your life, and the service she could do you by accepting my money and getting away from you, that she would so much as listen to me—”
He looked up at me, and his voice trailed off into silence.
But I did nothing, except to say, in a voice that I knew to be my own because he was no longer speaking and there was certainly no other person in the room—
“So you talked of me!”