Pierre stood before the cheap bureau of his ugly hotel bedroom turning
a red slip of cardboard about in his fingers. The gas-jet sputtering
above his head threw heavy shadows down on his face. It was the face
of hopeless, heartsick youth, the muscles sagging, the eyes dull, the
lips tight and pale. Since last night when the contemptuous glitter of
Joan's smile had fallen upon him, he had neither slept nor eaten.
Jasper had joined him at the theater exit, had walked home with him,
and, while he was with the manager, Pierre's pride and reserve had
held him up. Afterwards he had ranged the city like a prairie wolf,
ranged it as though it had been an unpeopled desert, free to his
stride. He had fixed his eyes above and beyond and walked alone in
pain.
Dawn found him again in his room. What hope had sustained him, what
memory of Joan, what purpose of tenderness toward her--these hopes and
memories and purposes now choked and twisted him. He might have found
her, his "gel," his Joan, with her dumb, loving gaze; he might have
told her the story of his sorrow in such a way that she, who forgave
so easily, would have forgiven even him, and he might have comforted
her, holding her so and so, showing her utterly the true, unchanged,
greatly changed love of his chastened heart. This girl, this love of
his, whom, in his drunken, jealous madness, he had branded and driven
away, he would have brought her back and tended her and made it up to
her in a thousand, in ten thousand, ways. Pierre knelt by his bed, his
black head buried in the cover, his arms bent above it, his hands
clenched. Out there he had never lost hope of finding her, but here,
in this peopled loneliness, with a memory of that woman's heartless
smile, he did at last despair. In a strange, torturing way she had
been like Joan. His heart had jumped to his mouth at first sight of
her. And just there, to his shoulder where her head reached, had
Joan's dear black head reached too. Pierre groaned aloud. The picture
of her was so vivid. Not in months had the reality of his "gel" come
so close to his imagination. He could feel her--feel her! O God!
That was the sort of night he had spent and the next day he passed in
a lethargy. He had no heart to face the future now that the great
purpose of his life had failed. Holliwell's God of comfort and
forgiveness forsook him. What did he want with a God when that one
comrade of his lonely, young, human life was out there lost by his own
cruelty! Perhaps she was dead. Perhaps the wound had killed her. For
all these years she might have been lying dead somewhere in the snow,
under the sky. Sharp periods of pain followed dull periods of stupor.
Now it was night again and a recollection of Jasper's theater ticket
had dragged him to a vague purpose. He wanted to see again that woman
who had so vivified his memory of Joan. It would be hateful to see her
again, but he wanted the pain. He dressed and groomed himself
carefully. Then, feeling a little faint, he went out into the
clattering, glaring night.