“I remember once, after I’d been there about a month, I started to pull his leg about those boots of his.
“‘Take the devil of a long time cleaning them in the morning, don’t you, Jimmy?’ I said, as he lounged up to the bar for his third gin.
“‘Yes,’ he answered, leaning over the counter so that his face was close to mine. ‘Got anything further to say about my appearance?’
“‘Jimmy,’ I replied, ‘your appearance doesn’t signify one continental damn to me. But as the only two regular British _habitués_ of this first-class American bar, don’t let’s quarrel.’
“‘Think not?’ he said. ‘Might amuse one. However, perhaps you’re right.’
“And so it went on—one sweltering day after another, until one could have gone mad with the hideous boredom of it. I used to stand behind the bar there sometimes and curse weakly and foolishly like a child, but I never heard Mainwaring do it. What happened during those steamy nights in the privacy of his own room, when he—like the rest of us—was fighting for sleep, is another matter. During the day he never varied. Cold, cynical, immaculate, he seemed a being apart—above our little worries and utterly contemptuous of them. Maybe he was right—maybe the thing that had downed him was too big for foolish cursing. Knowing what I do now, a good many things are clear which one didn’t realise at the time.
“Only once, I think, did I ever get in the slightest degree intimate with him. It was latish one evening, and the bar was empty save for us two. I’d been railing against the fate that had landed me penniless in such an accursed spot, and after a while he chipped in, in his lazy drawl:
“I looked at him speechless. ‘A thousand pounds?’ I stammered.
“‘Yes; I think I can raise that for you.’ He was staring in front of him as he spoke. ‘And yet I don’t know. I’ve got more or less used to you and you’ll have to stop a bit longer. Then we’ll see about it.’
“‘But, good heavens! man,’ I almost shouted, ‘do you mean to say that you stop here when you can lay your hand on a thousand pounds?’
“‘It appears so, doesn’t it?’ He rose and stalked over to the bar. ‘It doesn’t much matter where you stop, Merton, when you can’t be in the one place where you’d sell your hopes of Heaven to be. And it’s best, perhaps, to choose a place where the end will come quickly.’