Then, slowly, they moved on toward the old stone ramp that leads up to the top of the Tartar Wall, just outside the compound of the American Legation.
I could not follow them here, for I should certainly be seen.
Heloise hesitated once, and it seemed to me that she meant to draw back. But after a moment she went on, and together they slowly mounted the incline.
I turned away. I tried to tell myself that there was no significance in this walk of theirs. Whatever it was he wished to say—up there on the broad summit of the Wall where they could walk and talk in quiet, removed from the turmoil of the city—certainly she had a right to listen if she chose. He had been annoying her persistently. She was not the sort to run away from anything. She was unafraid. Perhaps by facing him and hearing him out she would dispose of him once and for all.
But I did not succeed in imposing this attitude of mind on myself. And I am going to tell what followed. It marks the lowest point to which this strange new self of mine has sunk—as yet. It must be told.
I walked like mad the whole length of Legation Street—a mile. Perhaps I ran. I don't know. I rushed by the Wagon-lits Hotel with no more than a glance. I did not seem to care that Crocker was in there and might soon emerge. I did not seem to care about anything. I was all empty—life was laughing at me for all the years I had taken it so seriously and so hard. Yet, empty and purposeless as I felt, the forces that keep at me so, these days, were overwhelming me.
I went out through the German Gate saying—aloud—“What do I know about this woman? What is she to me? Who is she, that I should permit her to devastate my life!”
Some German soldiers heard me, and laughed.
There I stood, a thin little man, doubtless flushed and wild of eye, laying bare my poor tom heart to the world; and the soldiers were laughing at me.
I hurried away. An empty rickshaw was passing. I hailed it and leaped in. I rode straight to my little hotel. I ran up the stairs. I let myself into my room, and slammed the door shut behind me. I tore open the drawer of the bureau where I had carefully put away the ten cylinders on which Heloise and I had painstakingly recorded the close-interval scales.