my own girl is far away, and perhaps has taken another sweetheart, while I have been betraying her.'
No, I won't listen any more to that stupid music. What on earth has this sailor and his lamentations to do with me? Let him cry over his concertina, but spare me from translating his ding-dongs into words. I don't want to be melancholy. My purse and my heart are still safe; women cannot take more from me than I want to give them.
I went out to the square, where beneath the electric lights the girls promenade around the old stiff-legged statue, like the horses in a merry-go-round. I chose the prettiest and took her with me. She was a good soul, eager to please me, and grateful to be in a warm, comfortable room with a man who treated her gently.
But she gave me no joy, and while caressingly she leant against me and begged me to say that I loved her a little, my heart was crying, because—because I had foolishly listened to a sailor who played on his concertina!
XXXEverymorning a curiously restless feeling hunts me out. I go roaming about town without any object whatever, street up, street down. I favour most the streets where the young women go shopping.
Though quite without reason I am always in a hurry, as if I feared to be too late. The fact is, I don't want to be stopped by friends — don't want to speak to any one. I want to be alone. I keep
