Only
a week since the cyprian at present engaged in washing his dishes had
been nearly demolished by the damsel she had superseded. She still
wore a livid mark on her cheek and a plaster on her head whence a
handful of hair had been removed by the roots. He had stood aloof
during the fracas in the dirty garish dance house under the sidewalk,
laughing consumedly; and had awakened the next night to find the
victor mending her tattered finery. She made him an excellent cup of
coffee, and he had told her curtly that she could stay.
If, in his comparatively sober moments, the memory of Madeleine
intruded, he cast it out with a curse. Not because he blamed her for
his downfall; he blamed no one but himself; but because any
recollection of the past, all it had been and promised, was
unendurable. Whether he had been strong or weak in electing to go
straight to perdition when Life had scourged him, he neither knew nor
cared. He began to drink on the steamer, determined to forget for the
present, at least; but the mental condition induced was far more
agreeable than those moments of sobriety when he felt as if he were
in hell with fire in his vitals and cold terror of the future in his
brain. In New York, driven by his pride, he had made one or two
attempts to recover himself, but the writing of unsigned editorials
on subjects that interested him not at all was like wandering in a
thirsty desert without an oasis in sight--after the champagne of his
life in San Francisco with a future as glittering as its skies at
night and the daily companionship of a woman whom he had believed the
fates must give him wholly in time.
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