After some moments the Commissioner spoke again but his tone was different.
"Hamilton, you know we all have to make sacrifices to our official position, to public opinion, to social usage. Ah! what a Moloch that is that we've created, it devours our best. Yes ... a Moloch!" he muttered half to himself, gazing on the floor.
"Still, it's there, and we all suffer equally in turn. I know what it is myself. I have been through it all." He stopped, gazing fixedly at the beautiful crimson roses in the pattern of his Wilton carpet. What visions swept before him of gleaming eyes and sweeping brows, ruthlessly blotted out by a large, raw-boned figure and face of aggressive chastity. "I am sorry for you, but there it is; whatever the rights of the case, you can't make a scandal like this."
"I am ready to resign my post if necessary," returned Hamilton; "I have enough to live on without my pay."
The Commissioner started, and looked at him.
"Is she so handsome as that?" he asked in a low tone, leaning a little forward. Mrs. Commissioner was not there, and he was forgetting officialdom.
Hamilton hesitated a moment. Then he drew from his pocket a photograph, taken by himself, of Saidie standing amongst her flowers.
The beautiful Eastern face, the lovely, youthful, sinuous figure, veiled in its slight, transparent drapery, taken by an artist and a lover in the clear, actinic Indian light, made an exquisite work of art. It lay in the hand of the Commissioner, and he gazed on it, remembering his long-past youth.
After a long time Hamilton broke the silence.
"Now, you know," he said at last, "why I am ready to resign my post rather than resign that; and it is not only her beauty that charms me, it is her devotion, her love.... Do you know, white or black, superior or inferior, these two women are not to be mentioned in one breath. The one you see there is a woman, the other is a fiend."