Visiting hours were always exciting to Edward because Emily might come. He still boasted to himself that she had gone to China and that he was sunk in despair, but actually he felt convinced that he had mistaken Banner Hope’s meaning. When he should next see her he would tell her of his mistake as a sort of heroically tragic joke. She would come any day now and sit beside his bed and tears would come into his eyes and his thin hand would grope for hers and for a moment they would both be unable to speak. Then he would say simply, “They told me you had gone.” And she would think, “Could I ever find a more faithful lover than this?” and she would touch his hot thin cheek with her cold fingers.
He hated the nights. Either he would stay awake and watch the dim sickly light upon the ceiling and think of his dreary yet too expensive room at the hotel absorbing money all this time, and think of the senseless and exasperating death of Jimmy at Loos, and think of money again and of the fact that he could not get his complexion clear—directly one set of spots healed another began. Or else he would sleep and dream cruelly and grotesquely of endless, arid journeys and of beautiful anticipations that withered away and of missing trains—never of Emily.
In the daytime he would forget the hateful night. All day till about six, when the night clamored to be remembered, he was almost contented.
CHAPTER FIVE
Close akin my warriors are;
From the humming bird that swings
All a-quiver, like a star
In a radiance of quick wings—
—To the tiger mountains, stricken