For a moment I could only look up at him. I must admit that he was convincing. What he said was quite true—disordered as he had been, through passion and drink, he was not yet a common drunkard. There was yet stuff in the man Besides if, as I was beginning to hope, he really meant to accept my plan, the less than three hours he asked for was a quite reasonable concession to his pride.
I had to make the decision. I did make it.
“All right,” I said, “I'll come at two.”
He looked straight at me, and held out his hand.
“You've helped me, I think,” he said, in a very decent spirit. Then he glanced down at his big hand, and added—“Better take it, Eckhart.”
I took it. Then, stirred by doubts and hopes so extreme and so confused that I hardly knew what I was thinking, I went out. The last I saw of him, then, he was throwing aside his under-wear, and exposing a deep chest, with big muscles curving down over the shoulders, and smaller ridges of muscle in rows on either side. And on his face was that set look.
I ran up the stairs (at the Hôtel de Chine) and burst into my own room. Then I stopped short, and took off my hat.
For there, by the window—in my room—stood Heloise. She wore a simple but very beautiful frock of her favorite color, blue. It made her look taller, and slimmer, and more exquisitely womanly.
The room itself was changed. She had picked it up, and given it what few cheerful touches she could. On the bureau, in the toothbrush holder from my washstand, stood a spray of white cherry or pear blossoms. I can't imagine where she got them; I did not think to ask, when we were together, for we had so much else on our minds.
On the bureau, also, in a neat little pile, were the pieces of my ten broken cylinders. She had gathered them all and put them there.