Тринадцать гостей / Thirteen Guests

Any place would do, so long as it was an unfamiliar place, a place without associations. Somebody ahead of him in the ticket office had said, “Flensham.” So he had said, “Flensham.”

And this was where the somebody had unconsciously led him—to her own reflection standing out vividly and tormentingly in the darkness of a window!

“Nonsense—nonsense!” he repeated in his thoughts. “I’m just in a mess. This is reaction. It doesn’t mean anything. Reaction, and my foot. Lord, how it’s hurting!”

He concentrated on the pain, trying to trick himself.

He rejoiced in its re-discovery, and saddled it with responsibility for his condition. Pain played the deuce with any one. It temporarily distorted values, and gave fictitious significance to unimportant things. That was why patients in hospitals so often fell in love with their nurses....

Nadine came back to him as abruptly as she had left him.

“What are you going to do?” she asked. “Stay here?” He stared at her.

Her tone was almost harsh. “I mean—well, you’ve spoken so little about yourself, haven’t you? Aren’t you expected somewhere to-night?”

He shook his head.

“Where were you going when I met you at the station?”

“Didn’t you ask that? Anywhere.”

“That sounds morbid!”

“Don’t judge by the sound. I’m fond of roaming.”

“I see. And you roamed—here.”

“Yes.” He had a sense that they were going round and round in a circle, and he tried to smash his way out.

“You know, I don’t think my foot’s half as bad as it seems.” Yet a moment ago he had been insisting on the pain of it. “I believe I could get away all right.”

“You think the foot could stand it?”

“I think so.”

“But the question still remains—where do you want to get away to?”

They were moving back into the circle again. He became exasperated.

“Yes, and that’s my question,” he retorted.

“Sorry,” she said.

He was appalled at himself.

He had not intended to betray his exasperation. He was not exasperated any longer. He did not understand how he ever had been.

“No, I’m sorry,” he muttered. “Really, you must forgive me. You’ve been terribly kind. I don’t know what’s the matter with me.”

Nadine knew. It was her knowledge that had sent her to the window, and that had produced her rather lame effort to readjust the trouble. Something had happened very suddenly.