"'"I am yours; whenever you need me I shall come to you." That is what she said.' "He jerked forward over the table, his head in his hands. A horrible spiritual discomfort crept into me. I didn't want to hear about it; I didn't! I wanted to hush him, push my hand against that blasphemous mouth---- "'And I left her in the garden, in the dew of the morning, among the roses!' "He rose stiffly, drew his hands from his face, down to his sides, as if with great effort, squared his shoulders, snapped his heels together, and marched off as he had come in. "Thus I first saw her, and always after saw her, in indelible picture--a frail young girl, of eyes with the sea-glint in them, picking roses in the dewy morning. Roses!--thousands of them--red and white and yellow; they are at her feet, at her sides, above her; their petals are in her hair, their incense is about her like an adoration. "I saw him off and on after that, but he never mentioned her again--for which I was thankful. The disintegration was going on. Those black periods of revolt were less frequent now. Professionally he was still strong, had had the honour of being placed on the Katipunan's blacklist, the honour of carrying proudly, like an iron corselet, an exterior of cold indifference above the inward tension of every moment. "And then came that night. "Yes, that's the night, the night of which you all know something. But I know more; he told me everything, that one time he talked, his lips unsealed in a burst of hysteria. "He awoke, that night, smothered beneath the black weight of some indefinite discomfort. Instinctively his right hand slipped beneath his pillow and closed upon the Mauser pistol; but when he had lived thus a full minute, his fingers clutched about the stock, his breath convulsive in his throat, he slowly released the weapon with a sigh that was not relief. For it was not from the Katipunan warning that came this vague oppression that through his sleep had wrapped him as in a shroud; it was something deeper, more subtle and more intimate; it was interfibred with his innermost being, and it was torture. "He fought the haunting thing. It was a terrible night. The heat lay upon him like a catafalque. The enfevering rumour of moat-born gnats clung to the netting surrounding him; from the patio-hall there came the weary cough of a muchacho, stretched in his toil-damp clothes upon the polished floor. Outside, between the conch-shell shutters of the veranda the horizon was luminous with the moon; a beam stole into the steaming darkness of the room. It flashed up the mosquito bar into shimmering vapour; blandly it began a pointing-out of details, the inexorable details of his life's vulgarity. A nausea shook his being; he slipped to the floor and out to the balcony.