“You can’t hate a cat for killing a bird because it’s the cat’s nature, and you can’t get sore at me for being rude because that’s my nature. Please, Sonia!”

“All right,” I said. “I’ll try once more. It will be a little later next Sunday, I expect.” We shook hands and said good-by with an exaggerated warmth.

I walked quickly between the banks of snow which lighted the streets like moonlight. A few doors from Nathan’s building, I heard someone playing a recorder and I paused for a minute to listen. It was a tender, doleful tune like some Irish lamentation. The bold blood rushed to my face and fingertips. I passed on and peered into the uncurtained ground-floor rooms of students, for no other purpose than to see that they were all clean and comfortable, all unlike Nathan’s and unlike my red room.

The room had been a little random daydream which I could have again, or it was like a lengthened déjà vu, that evasive quasi-memory which is a sort of unlearned knowledge of the soul. I could, I knew, in time, name in its real place each object in the room, and I felt confident that even after my vivisection, the room would accomplish again its impeccable synthesis, a fused and incomprehensible entity. It was a sanctuary and its tenant was my spirit, changing my hot blood to cool ichor and my pain to ease. Under my own merciful auspices, I had made for myself a tamed-down sitting-room in a dead, a voiceless, city where no one could trespass, for I was the founder, the governor, the only citizen.

FIVE

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