The iconoclastic antics of the dancing girls and the transaction with Sam Casserly together accounted for perhaps fifteen or twenty minutes out of the five hours we had spent in the crowded room where the green and red lights, veiled by smoke, made the atmosphere crepuscular. But I remembered that we had not been idle and that our intake of noteworthy amounts of rum had been accompanied by unflagging talk which, although its substance was irrevocable, seemed, on retrospect, to have issued altogether from my lips. I could fairly see Nathan’s face patiently registering courteous sympathy with my complaints, amusement at my mirthless anecdotes, respect for my moral and literary judgments. And yet, gradually, as if I were reading a book which I had forgotten I had read before, so much of my companion’s current history came back that it seemed impossible, in view of the fact that I had learned all this in just five hours, that I could have uttered a word, but that the solo voice had been his, interlarding the calendar of his love-affairs and his scholastic enterprises with expositions of his character, guesses about mine, and childhood reminiscences common to both of us. He was now, he told me, at Harvard and had been for two years, studying literature with the support of a fellowship. He was also tutor to Harry Morgan and was making so much money (he lived very simply) that he had saved almost enough to go to Paris after his graduation. Before the flight from America, he thought he might marry a Japanese girl whom he described as superbly beautiful, or else an elderly French fly-by-night who had no attractions for him but who spoke both German and French and could therefore act as his interpreter. And I believed, though I could not be certain, that when I reminded him that I was also bilingual (this exaggeration had evinced no comment from him), he had accepted my application, but had made it perfectly clear that he was in love with the Japanese girl.

I could not, though I exerted a supreme effort, retrace the paths I had traveled in our conversation, but I knew, if from nothing else than from the simple observation of human nature, that I had not been silent this whole time. What troubled me, therefore, to the point of tears which bubbled out of my red-hot eyes, was that I had possibly so involved myself with Nathan Kadish that I dared not cut myself off from him at once, must see him immediately again to ascertain how much and from what irascible or sentimental viewpoint I had revealed. And yet, because I could not dissociate him from my malaise, I desired nothing so little as this second interview.