Hurried, ostentatiously heavy footsteps sounded in the hall. They stopped at the door, and some one fumbled noisily at the knob. There was a stage cough, and Kitty plunged into the room, carefully unnoticing.
"Such an idea for--a hippopotamus comic," she panted; "a darling! Sent drawings down--messenger--rushed back to sketch--"
Snatching off her gloves she resumed her place at the big table, and began making wild strokes with a crayon on a great sheet of cardboard.
"I just _had_ to do it," said she apologetically over her shoulder; "but--don't mind me."
It was dusk when I left Helen. My head was buzzing.
Out of her presence what I had seen was unthinkable, unbelievable. I could do nothing but walk, walk--a man in a dream.
I rushed ahead, jostling people in silly haste; I dawdled. I carefully set my feet across the joinings of paving blocks; I zigzagged; I turned corners aimlessly. Once a policeman touched me as I blinked into the roaring torches of a street-repairing gang. Once I found myself on Brooklyn Bridge, looking down at big boats shaped like pumpkin seeds, with lights streaking from every window. Once I woke behind a noisy group under the coloured lights of a Bowery museum.
It rained, for horses were rubber-blanketed, and umbrellas dripped on me as I passed. I was hungry, for I smelled the coffee a sodden woman drank at the side of a night lunch wagon. But how could I believe myself awake or sane?
Again and again I found my way back to the bench on Union Square, from which I could gaze at Helen's window, now dark and forbidding. Across an open space was a garish saloon. When the door swung open, I saw the towels hanging from the bar. Two men reeled across the street and sat down by me.
"Dan's goin' t' kill 'imself 'cause 'is wife's gone," blubbered the other. "Tell 'm not ter, can't ye, matey? Tell 'im' t's 'nough fer one t' die!"
I walked away in the darkness, but I felt better. Drunkenness was no miracle: I was awake and sane, sane and awake in a homely world of sorrow and folly and love and mystery.
I went to bed thinking of Cleopatra, "brow-bound with burning gold"; of Fair Rosamond; Vivien, who won Merlin's secret; of Lilith and strange, shining women--not one of them like the goddess the glory of whose smile had dazzled me. At last I slept, late and heavily.