eaten
passion-fruit, he would not have felt this carking humiliation. If she
had been like them, at the pace he had been going since he obtained
possession of her, he would already have "finished," as Rosek had said.
And he knew well enough that he had not "finished." He might get drunk,
might be loose-ended in every way, but Gyp was hooked into his senses,
and, for all that he could not get near her, into his spirit. Her very
passivity was her strength, the secret of her magnetism. In her, he felt
some of that mysterious sentiency of nature, which, even in yielding to
man's fevers, lies apart with a faint smile--the uncapturable smile of
the woods and fields by day or night, that makes one ache with longing.
He felt in her some of the unfathomable, soft, vibrating indifference of
the flowers and trees and streams, of the rocks, of birdsongs, and the
eternal hum, under sunshine or star-shine. Her dark, half-smiling eyes
enticed him, inspired an unquenchable thirst. And his was one of those
natures which, encountering spiritual difficulty, at once jib off, seek
anodynes, try to bandage wounded egoism with excess--a spoiled child,
with the desperations and the inherent pathos, the something repulsive
and the something lovable that belong to all such. Having wished for
this moon, and got her, he now did not know what to do with her, kept
taking great bites at her, with a feeling all the time of getting further
and further away. At moments, he desired revenge for his failure to get
near her spiritually, and was ready to commit follies of all kinds. He
was only kept in control at all by his work. For he did work hard;
though, even there, something was lacking. He had all the qualities of
making good, except the moral backbone holding them together, which alone
could give him his rightful--as he thought--pre-eminence. It often
surprised and vexed him to find that some contemporary held higher rank
than himself.

Threading the streets in his cab, he mused:

"Did I do anything that really shocked her last night? Why didn't I wait
for her this morning and find out the worst?" And his lips twisted
awry--for to find out the worst was not his forte. Meditation, seeking as
usual a scapegoat, lighted on Rosek. Like most egoists addicted to
women, he had not many friends. Rosek was the most constant. But even
for him, Fiorsen had at once the contempt and fear that a man naturally
uncontrolled and yet of greater scope