“Hardly, Henry.” She was a thought grim about this.
“You can be as rationalistic as you like,” said he, musing, “but marriage is a fairy story. Like the old-fashioned Christmas with tree and candles and red bells—yes, and Santa Claus. You can't rationalise love, and you can't casualize it. Not without debasing it. Love isn't rational. It is exclusive, exacting, mysterious. It isn't even wholly selfish.” His tone lightened. “All of which is highly heterodox, here on Tenth Street.”
She smiled faintly and busied herself over the teakettle.
“I'm glad to see that Zanin keeps friendly, Sue.” She sobered, and said: “There, it's boiling.” The bell sounded again—two short rings, a pause, one long ring.
She started, bit her lip. “That's Zanin now,” she said. “He hasn't been here since—” She moved toward the door, then hesitated. “I wish you would—”
She bit her lip again, then suddenly went. He heard the door open and heard her saying: “Henry Bates is here. Come in.”
Zanin entered the room, and the Worm quietly considered him. The man had a vision. And he had power—unhindered by the inhibitions of the Anglo-Saxon conscience, undisciplined by the Latin instinct for form, self-freed from the grim shackles of his own ancestry. He wore a wrinkled suit, cotton shirt with rolling collar, his old gray sweater in lieu of waistcoat.
He drank three cups of tea, chatted restively, drummed with big fingers on the chair-arm and finally looked at his watch.
The Worm knocked the ashes from his pipe and considered. Just what did Sue wish he would do? No use glancing at her for further orders, for now she was avoiding his glances. He decided to leave.
Out on the sidewalk he stood for a moment hesitating between a sizable mess of those deep-sea bivalves at Jim's oyster bar and wandering back across Sixth Avenue and Washington Square to the rooms. It wasn't dinner time; but every hour is an hour with oysters, and Jim's was only a step. But then he knew that he didn't want to eat them alone. For one moment of pleasant self-forgetfulness he had pictured Sue sitting on the other side of the oysters. They went with Sue to-night, were dedicated to her. He considered this thought, becoming rather severe with himself, called it childish sentimentality; but he didn't go to Jim's. He went to the rooms.