“You’re damned well right, I didn’t,” he answered. “And you’re going to tell them so. Now, I was a fool once, but you won’t catch me that way again: I begged and pleaded to get you in here and you go and play a dirty trick like this. And you’re going to pay for it, too.”
“I’ll pay, I’ll pay,” Robert said hastily. “I know it was my fault. I’ll pay whatever they ask. Have they said anything to you about it?” he said nervously. “What do they say?”
“They say you’ve got to pay for all the damage that you’ve done and get out of the hotel at once.”
“Oh, I’ll pay!” he said earnestly, and with a pleading note in his voice. “I don’t want to leave the hotel…. I’ll never act like that again…. Does Gibbs want to see me?” he said nervously.
“You can just bet your bottom dollar he does! And right now!”
“Come on!” said Robert coaxingly. “You go with me…. He’ll listen to you…. Tell him how it was.”
“Tell him how it was! Why, he knows damn well how it was! And so do you! You were lousy and crazy-drunk, that’s how it was…. No, I won’t do it: I’ve been your goat long enough. You’ll have to fight it out with him for yourself…. And don’t you bring my name into it, either, Robert; this was a hell of a thing to do!” Eugene yelled furiously. “In God’s name, what’s got into you? Have you gone mad?”
“Ah,” he said in a brooding, sullen tone, “you know what it is…. It’s that woman…. It’s Martha! I can’t get her off my mind, I think about her all the time…. My God, Eugene, if something doesn’t happen soon, I will go crazy, sure enough.”
“Happen! What do you want to happen?”
He beat himself, suddenly and savagely, on his breast.
“Christ knows!” he said. “Something’s got to break loose… here… here… here!” His eyes were shot with tears and a madness of desperation: in this baffled and infuriated gesture there was something that was really painful, tortured, and deeply moving: all at once Eugene felt sorry for him; he did not know why Robert wanted to stay at the hotel any longer; he did not know what he found there in that shabby and sterile life to attract or interest him, and perhaps it was nothing except a sense in him that he was disgraced, an outcast from the ranks of orderly society: he wanted to stay in order to subdue the fear and shame he felt, and to soothe, in whatever way he could, his lacerated pride. Therefore Eugene resolved to help him.
“Robert,” he said, “if you really want to stay here, why don’t you go and
