Fiorsen, leaving his house that morning, had walked till he saw a
taxi-cab. Leaning back therein, with hat thrown off, he caused himself
to be driven rapidly, at random. This was one of his habits when his
mind was not at ease--an expensive idiosyncrasy, ill-afforded by a
pocket that had holes. The swift motion and titillation by the perpetual
close shaving of other vehicles were sedative to him. He needed
sedatives this morning. To wake in his own bed without the least
remembering how he had got there was no more new to him than to many
another man of twenty-eight, but it was new since his marriage. If he
had remembered even less he would have been more at ease. But he could
just recollect standing in the dark drawing-room, seeing and touching a
ghostly Gyp quite close to him. And, somehow, he was afraid. And when he
was afraid--like most people--he was at his worst.
If she had been like all the other women in whose company he had eaten
passion-fruit, he would not have felt this carking humiliation. If she
had been like them, at the pace he had been going since he obtained
possession of her, he would already have "finished," as Rosek had said.
And he knew well enough that he had not "finished." He might get drunk,
might be loose-ended in every way, but Gyp was hooked into his senses,
and, for all that he could not get near her, into his spirit.
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