he picture was finished, he
wanted to get out of that room, with it; out into the dark and
loneliness of the streets, where he could walk and think.

There was something peculiarly horrifying to him in the exhibition
Randolph was making of himself. He'd never in his life taken a drink,
except convivially, and then he took as little as would pass muster.
He'd always found it hard to be sensibly tolerant of the things men said
and did in liquor, even when their condition had overtaken them
unawares. Going off alone and deliberately fuddling one's self as a
means of escaping unpleasant realities, struck him as an act of the
basest cowardice. Whether Randolph's revelation of himself were true or
distorted by alcohol, didn't seem much to matter. But for that picture
of Rose, he'd have gone long ago and left the man to his bemused
reflections. Only ...

He'd said that Rose understood everything and didn't despise him. A
drunken fancy likely enough. She had seen something though. Her letter
proved that. And having seen it, she'd asked him to drop in on the
doctor for a visit. Did she mean she wanted him to try to help?

He tried, though not very successfully, to conceal his violent disrelish
of the task, when he said:

"Look here, Jim! What the devil is the matter with you? Are you sober
enough to tell me?"

Randolph put down his glass. "I have told you," he said. "It's a thing
that can be told in one word. I'm a prostitute. I'm Eleanor's kept man.
Well kept, oh, yes. Beautifully kept. I'm nothing in God's world but a
possession of hers! A trophy of sorts, an ornament. I'm something she's
made. I have a hell of a big practise. I'm the most fashionable doctor
in Chicago. They come here, the women, damn them, in shoals. That's
Eleanor's doing. I'm a faker, a fraud, a damned actor. I pose for them.
I play up. I give them what they want. And that's her doing. They go
silly about me; fancy they're in love with me. That's what she wants
them to do. It increases my value for her as a possession.

"I haven't done a lick of honest work in the last year. I can't work.
She won't let me work. She--smothers me. Wherever I turn, there she is,
smoothing things out, trying to making it easy, trying to anticipate my
wants. I've only one want. That's to be let alone. She can't do that.
She's insatiable. She can't help it. There's something drives her on so
that she never can feel sure that she possesses me completely enough.
There's alwa