April 14th.
ALL the rest of that night of the 12th-13th I sat in my dark room, or softly walked the floor, or gazed out at the sleeping city fit un my one window. And all night I was conscious of unusual and increasingly violent nervous reactions. Turning the pages back, I note that I attempted the other day to write a definition of love. This was absurd. I do not know what love is. Nobody knows. It is a capricious and wild thing. It flashes like the lightning, and rushes like the wind. It grows by feeding on itself. It exalts. It devastates. It contains within itself all the latent possibilities of nobility and service, of lust and jealousy, of tenderness, of sacrifice, of murder. It is a blind, insistent force; yet it shines before the mind's eye like dewdrops on the gossamer wings of fairies.
When morning finally came, I stood there at my window and watched the sun climb slowly over the Legation walls. It was a flat red sun, hung behind a film of dusty air.
I wondered how long it would be before I should tap on Heloise's door. Not long. I feared. All night I had been waiting; all night I had been withholding my hand.
I heard her get up, and stir about her room. I wondered if she had slept. Perhaps, for she still did not know what I knew.
For a long, long time I waited.
Finally, at seven o'clock. I tiptoed across the creaking floor. I stood there by the door. I raised my hand, then dropped it. My throat became suddenly dry.
At length I tapped.
She had been stirring there, on the other side of the door. Now, at the sound, she was still.