Then I went out into the little Chinese street, and once again headed toward the big hotel in the Legation Quarter.
April 14, (continued).
CROCKER opened his door at my knock.
He was half dressed, with a quilted gown drawn about his big frame.
He gripped my hand. I permitted this, which was perhaps an odd thing to do; but it came about so easily and swiftly that I could not think how to prevent it without appearing merely childish.
Then I went on into the room, and stood, with some sense of inner tension, while he drew an easy chair to the table and with a paper cutter pried open a box of cigars.
He has changed, even in the fortnight since our parting in the railway station at Yokohama. He is putting on weight pretty rapidly, and his face distinctly exhibits the ravages of drink. It was pale this morning. His eyeballs were crisscrossed with red veins, and there was an incipient puffiness under them. His hands were unsteady, too; I noted that fact when he opened the cigars. And afterward, when he dropped on the sofa and settled back against the cushions, he extended his right hand as I had seen him do once or twice before, back at Yokohama, and make an unsuccessful effort to hold it still. Then he let it fall across his knee, and for a moment stared gloomily at the carpet.
I observed, too, that he was more nervous. He moved with a jerky abruptness. And when he glanced up at me, it was suddenly, with a perceptible start, as if I had spoken sharply, though in reality I had not spoken at all. It made me think of the torturing confusion of moods that was racking his nervous system, and of the merciless voices of unrest that were so evidently whispering every moment at his inner ear. A few days ago I would not have observed his condition with any sympathetic understanding; but now that I, too, have been torn between the exaltation of love and the degradation of jealousy, I can only shake my head in a sad sort of wonder at the mysterious strength of these forces that drive men and women together, and apart, and that linger even after a mismating and a subsequent separation to stir and bewilder the spirit.... Yes, I can, in a way, feel with Crocker now. To live with memories of magical hours passed with a woman one has since lost—elusive, poignant memories, that come in the still hours of night to triumph over the brutal facts of the day that is gone and the day that is to come—this is the stuff of tragedy.