"Oh how could I? How can I? How can I be glittering and shining with a
man who is always crying? How can we be--be conquerors together when I
never, never think of him except as 'poor boy' or 'silly idiot'? Oh
no--no--I can't! I can't! Even if I do save him, what is there in that
for me? I want to shine--I daren't have hot, dirty, damp hands dragging
at me. I can't. I must be free, uncaught--"
The cabin became a cage; she wanted to push out the strong steel plates
and get out into the night: Louis's weakness, which had been all his
appeal to her, seemed an intolerable infliction, a cruel hoax on the
part of fate, just as though, for her shining lover, someone had
substituted a changeling stuffed with sawdust.
"I must tell him. But it's so cruel of me. I'm cruel--but I must tell
him."
In the next cabin he began to sing, rather jerkily, a song everyone on
the ship was singing just then.
"Won't you come back to Bombombay?
Won't you come back to Bombombay?
I'm grieving, now you're leaving
For a land so far away.
So sad and lonely shall I be,
When you are far away from me."
It was not the tipsy singing she had heard in the morning; it was jumpy,
tuneless singing; she guessed that it was assisting in the process of
shaving, for she heard a few "damns" peppering the song, which suggested
that his shaky hand was wielding the razor badly.
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