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parted the curtains, saw the girl lying there alone, and silently
stepped on to the threshold.
Now when at last she screamed - a hoarse diminutive sob - he
knew he must move, and so soundlessly on the carpet went towards
her. As he moved he spoke: 'I don't want to hurt you' - and then
knowing that he must say something more than that, which she
could hardly have believed, and knowing also that above all he
must keep talking all the time with no pause to let her attention
scream — 'Really I don't want to hurt you, you mustn't scream, let
me explain - but don't you see if you scream 1 shall have to stop
you. . . .' Even with a smile, as soft a gesture as his soft quick-
speaking voice, he pushed forward his coat pocket, his hand inside,
so that this girl might recognize what she must have seen in detec-
tive stories, and even believe it to be his hand and perhaps a pipe,
yet not be sure: ' . . . but I won't shoot and you'll promise won't
you to be good and not scream - while 1 tell you why I'm here. You
think I'm a burglar, that's not true. It's right I need a little money,
only a little cash, ten bob even, because I'm in trouble, not danger-
ous trouble, but let me tell you please,
please
listen to me, Miss.'
His voice continued softly talking, talking all the time quietly and
never stuttering nor hesitating nor leaving a pause. Gradually,
though her body remained alert and rigid, the girl's face relaxed.
He stood at the foot of the bed, in the full light of the bedside
lamp, leaning awkwardly on one leg, the cheap material of his coat
ruffled and papery. Still talking, always talking, he took off his hat,
lowered himself gently to sit on the end of the bed — rather to put
her at her ease than to encroach further for himself. As she sat, he
apologized. Then never pausing he told her a story, which was
nearly true, about his escape from a detention camp, the cruelty of
his long sentence for a trivial theft, the days thereafter of evasion,
Various Temptations
423
the furtive search for casual employment, and then worst of all the
long hours of time on his hands, the vacuum of time wandering,
time wasting on the cafe clocks, lamp-posts of time waiting on
blind corners, time walking away from uniforms, time of the head-
aching clocks loitering at the slow pace of death towards his sole
refuge - sleep. And this was nearly true - only that he omitted that
his original crime had been one of sexual assault; he omitted those
other dark occasions during the past three weeks; but he omitted
these events because in fact he had forgotten them, they could only
be recollected with difficulty, as episodes of vague elation, dark and
blurred as an undeveloped photograph of which the image should
be known yet puzzles with its indeterminate shape, its hints of light
in the darkness and always the feeling that it should be known, that
it once surely existed. This was also like anyone trying to remember
exactly what had been done between any two specific hours on
some date of a previous month, two hours framed by known en-
gagements yet themselves blurred into an exasperating and hungry
screen of dots, dark, almost appearing, convolving, receding.
So gradually as he offered himself to the girl's pity, that bed-
clothed hump of figure relaxed. Once her lips flexed their corners
in the beginning of a smile. Into her eyes once crept that strange
coquettish look, pained and immeasurably tender, with which a
woman takes into her arms a strange child. The moment of danger
was past, there would be no scream. And since now on her part she
seemed to feel no danger from him, then it became very possible
that the predicament might even appeal to her, to any girl nour-
ished by the kind of drama that filled the magazines littering her
bed. As well, he might look strained and ill — so he let his shoulders
droop for the soft extraction of her last sympathy.
Yet as he talked on, as twice he instilled into the endless story a
compliment to her and as twice her face seemed to shine for a mo-
ment with sudden life — nevertheless he sensed that all was not right
with this apparently well-contrived affair. For this, he knew, should
be near the time when he would be edging nearer to her, dropping
his hat, picking it up and shifting thus unostensibly his position. It
was near the time when he would be near enough to attempt, in
one movement, the risk that could never fail, either way, accepted
or rejected. B u t . . . he was neither moving forward nor wishing to
move. Still he talked, but now more slowly, with less purpose; he
found that he was looking at her detachedly, no longer mixing her
424.
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