had I in common with a woman
who had already given the best of her heart and soul to another man, who
still goes on weeping for his memory, who is but one amid the wreck and
flotsam of that artistic life so many start upon and so few ever succeed
in! And the picture was finished and I gave her the few dollars she had
earned and sent her away, just as calmly as if she'd been any poor drab
of a creature. My God! Dave! If she had stood there and asked me for all
I had, for my talent, for my soul to tread beneath her feet, I would
have laid them before her, thankfully, gladly. But I took her as far as
the door of the lift, forsooth, and gave her my coldest and most civil
smile. I'm a wonderful actor, Dave, and have mistaken my profession! I
hid it all from her--I--I think I did, anyway, and she never knew
anything, at that time. So, when she had gone, I told Yumasa to turn the
picture to the wall and then I went out to the club, and treated myself
pretty well, and then to the theatre and back to the club. Some of the
fellows are a pretty gay lot, sometimes, and I was good company for them
that night!"

For a moment he stopped and took up another cigar, mechanically, while I
kept on staring at him in silence.

"Oh! I was able to walk straight enough when I came home. The stuff had
little effect on me. In the taxi my head was whirling, though. But I got
back here and took up the picture again and placed it on the easel, in a
flood of light. It was wonderful! It seemed to me that she was coming
out of the frame and extending her round arms and slender fingers to me
till my heart was throbbing in my throat and choking me!"

He stopped again and took up his pacing once more, like some furred
beast in a cage.

"In the morning I looked at myself," he resumed. "A fine wreck of
manhood I appeared, bleared and haggard and with a mouth tasting of the
ash heap. But, after a Turkish bath, I was like some imitation of my
real self again, for I could hold myself in and think clearly. It meant
the abandoning of all my plans and the awakening, some day, in a period
of disillusionment, with a woman at my side carrying another man's child
and bestowing on me the remnants of her love. Ay, man! I was egotist
enough to think I should only have to ask, to put out my hand to her!
But I gripped myself again and felt proud of the control I could
exercise over my madness. The Jap packed up my things, and I went away
over there, where the other wo