The side street was narrow. A cross-town car shut off most of his view of the Avenue, a few yards away. Then it passed, and he saw a young couple strolling across toward the restaurant. The man—large, heavy of hand and foot, a peasant-like, face curiously lighted by burning eyes, better dressed than usual—was Jacob Zanin. The girl—slim, astonishingly fresh and pretty, not wearing the old tarn o' shanter and haphazard costume he associated with her, but a simple light suit—was Sue Wilde; the girl who by her hardness and selfishness had hurt Peter irreparably. There they were, chatting casually, quite at ease—Zanin, who didn't believe in marriage, who had pursued Sue with amazing patience for nearly two years, who had wrecked Peter's pocket; Sue, who had broken his heart.
CHAPTER XXVII—PETER IS DRIVEN TO ACT
THE spectacle stopped Peter's brain. Among all the wild pictures that had rushed helter skelter through his overwrought mind of late there had been nothing like this. Why, it was only a matter of days since he and Zanin had pummeled each other to an accompaniment of broken chairs, overturned tables, wrecked china, torn clothing, actual blood. He had pictured Sue, a confused disillusioned girl, rushing back to her home; Zanin a marked man, even in the Village, cowering away from his fellows. But this!
They passed the corner. With a great gulp of sheer emotion Peter followed, almost running. They turned into the Parisian—-but not into the familiar basement. Instead they mounted the wide front steps, as matter-of-fact as any two Upper West Siders out of a limousine. Peter pressed his hands to his eyes. He looked again. They had vanished within the building.
Peter walked back and forth. He told himself that he must think. But the fact clear even to his overwhelmed consciousness was that he was not thinking and that there was no immediate prospect of his being able to think. He went a whole block up the side street, stemming the thick tide of Jewish working girls from University Place and the lower Broadway district and men in overalls—muttering aloud, catching himself, compressing his lips, then muttering again. “She played with me!” So ran the muttering. “She is utterly lacking in responsibility, in any sense of obligation. She lacks spirituality. That is it, she lacks spirituality. She has no fineness. She is hard—hard! She is drifting like a leaf on these crazy Village currents of irrepressible self-indulgence. I tried to save her—God knows I tried! I did my best! I can't be blamed if she goes to pieces now! I can do no more—I must let her go!” But even while he spoke he gulped again; his face, nearly gray now, twisting painfully. He suddenly turned and rushed back to the Parisian.
He paused at the side doorway and peered in. Hy was not in evidence. A later glance, from within the barroom, disclosed that slightly illuminated young man in the corner room of the restaurant hanging over the table at which the taciturn Sumner Smith was still trying to read Le Sourire.
Peter went on into the crooked passage, passed the open doors of two eating rooms where only the first early diners had as yet drifted in, found himself at the door of the barber shop, stopped short, then seeing the familiar figure of Maria Tonifetti approaching her table in the corner, dodged back and into the washroom. Here the boy named Anatole said, “Good evening, Meester Mann,” and filled a basin for him. Peter dipped his hands into the warm water and washed them. He was surprised to find his forehead dripping with sweat. He dried his hands, removed his glasses and scrubbed his face. He turned on the cold water, wet a towel and pressed it to his temples and the back of his head, taking care not to wet his collar. His hands were trembling. And that impulse to talk aloud was rising uncontrollably. He went back to the corridor; stood motionless, breathing deeply; recalled with the force of an inspiration that Napoleon had feared nothing, not even the ladies with whose lives his own had become so painfully entangled and walked deliberately, staring straight before him, past that barber shop door.
At the foot of the crooked stairway he paused again. And again his face was twisting. “I've got to make the one more effort,” he said. “It isn't for myself, God knows! I gave her my love—I pledged her my life—I have suffered for her—I would have saved her if she had played fair! I've got to make this last effort!”