Page:Stanwood Pier--The ancient grudge.djvu/149

138 When he had closed the door of the house behind him, he walked down the driveway with a swelling in his throat and with a miserable feeling of despair. Lydia in Avalon—the presence to which he had looked with expectation and delight—could only be a torture to him—the more maddening the more that he saw her. From this moment he would give up the sight of her if he could not abandon the thought. And then savagely the old, primitive, brutal instincts seized him; he would strangle the thought of her, too. He boarded a car for New Rome and sat brooding and huddled together in a comer. He was not human, was he not? To-night he would carouse with humanity.

He was, however, in a mood which was not easily influenced by drink. In the bar-room in New Some he sat at a table and consumed whiskey. It could not take his mind from Lydia; he thought of her, with his arms outstretched upon the table, turning his glass slowly round and round in his fingers. Though his head remained clear, his thoughts seemed to grow tainted and corrupt, until suddenly he pushed the glass from him, and sitting with his head bowed on his hands muttered to himself, "God! I was soiling her with my thoughts!" He called for more whiskey and for more; and at last with a sullen, dogged, and inflamed mind he resolved this night to descend to a depth from which he need not again aspire, the memory of which would be a reproach and chastisement to his love. "She's not for me; let's be a man to-night." He betook himself upon slightly unsteady legs to the dance-hall.

A large blonde girl stood near the stairs talking with two men. Floyd approached and said to her abruptly, "Will you dance with me?" She looked round, ready to make some flippant reply, but the expression on his dark face subdued her, and she offered herself without a word. When he had put his arm round her, she tried a little coquettishness. "Now you've got me, don't look so fierce. Can't you smile, old Pain-in-the Face?" He did not answer, but whirled away with her, and if she felt