He made me nervous. I couldn't sit there indefinitely and listen to his sordid philosophy.
He was quick to catch my mood, and went on more to the point. This shiftiness is the seasoned lawyer in him, I suppose. He is pretty keen, after all.
“Look here, Eckhart—there's no sense in men like you and me beating about the bush. Crocker got blind drunk at Nagasaki, and missed the Shanghai boat. That night he told me the same story that he had doubtless told you. Or did n't he?”
I nodded. As he had said, there was no use beating about the bush.
“Then I've only this much to say, my boy. It's the one thing I've learned from life. Never—never—fall in love with a woman. Play with them, yes. Use them. But for God's sake don't let yourself fall in love with them!”
He was speaking with a curious emphasis. His gaze had drifted upward again toward the dirty ceiling. And now it was suddenly my turn to sit and watch him.
“Don't do it!” he went on. “Don't do it. They fasten their lives on you, they smother you. If you don't marry them, it's bad enough. If you do, it's worse. You are an extremely gifted young man. I do not know that I ever met a man with a keener mind or one that impressed me as having more driving, vital force with which to shape a career. You are out here now, right in your best years, full of enthusiasm for your work. Don't let any woman into your life. Good or bad, whatever the phrases mean, a woman is n't happy with a man until she has trimmed the scope of his life down to the compass of her own understanding. She has to get it right into her hands, and choke it. Then life begins to mean something to her. Personally I have come to the conclusion that I get on rather better with the bad women, so called. They don't expect so much. In a way they are squarer—better sports, as you Americans say. Remember, my boy, 'He travels the fastest who travels alone.'.
I was becoming tired of his wandering thoughts. Generalizations are a bore, anyway. They are always loose, and generally wrong. Then, too, I may as well admit that he was disturbing me deeply, this loose-minded but shrewd old man.
“Look here,” I said abruptly, “you know of this obsession of Crocker's?”
He bowed.