a stubborn and abominable perversity, seemed deliberately resolved on ruin.
His conduct became daily more absurd, extravagant, ridiculous. He was acting like a melodramatic fool, but it was impossible to laugh at his folly because of the desperate fatality that attended it. He did unbelievable things, contrived unbelievable situations that seemed fitting only in a world of opera but were shamefully unreal and unnecessary in the real one. What was really shameful and unworthy in his conduct was this—his fatality served no purpose, his reckless and deliberate pursuit of danger did no good except to dignify the melodramatic unreality of a comic opera situation with the realities of blood and death.
He was constantly and deliberately involving himself and others in these ridiculous but perilous situations. One night, in one of the Montmartre resorts, he had a quarrel with a man that would have been farcical save for the ugly consequences it produced, the painful and shameful memory it would later evoke. The man, an unpleasant, wizened-looking little Frenchman, a creature of the night, with obscene eyes, a yellowed skin, and a pointed beard half covering the features of a rodent, had not been able to keep his ugly eyes off Ann, had measured the noble proportions of her beauty with a kind of foul leering appraisal that had in it something almost as palpable and sensual as a naked touch, and now, as the orchestra struck up another tune, he approached the table, bowed, and asked her, courteously enough, for a dance.
Ann reddened furiously in the face, looked down sullenly at the tablecloth and, before she was able to think of a reply, Starwick said:
“Mademoiselle does not care to dance. Please go away.”
The cold arrogance of Starwick’s tone, and his curt dismissal, enraged the Frenchman. When he replied, his lips were bared in an ugly smile that showed unpleasant fangs of yellowed teeth; he said:
“Is the lady not allowed to speak for herself? Is Monsieur perhaps her guardian?”
“Will you please go away now?” Starwick said again, with a cold and weary impassivity. “You are boring us.”
“But, it’s marvellous!” The little Frenchman cast back his yellowed face and bared his fangs in a laugh of envenomed mockery. “It’s Monsieur D’Artagnan come to life again, and a lady so shy and modest that she can’t speak for herself! But, it’s superb!” he cried again, and with an ironic bow, concluded: “Monsieur, with all my heart I thank you for this wonderful diversion! You are very droll!”
