After some minutes of numbness, of trying to gather up the threads snapped off by his astonishment at the quickness of the affair, Mendel began to tremble. His hands and his knees shook, and he could not control them. It was only gradually that he began to realize how strong his feelings had been, and how great the horror and the shock of knowing through and through, without blinking a single fact, the terrible relationship that bound Logan and Oliver--tied together in an insatiable sensuality, locked in a deadly embrace, like beasts of prey fighting over carrion: a furious, evil conflict over a dead lust. . . . At the same time he knew that he was bound with them, that in their life together he had his share, and that it was dragging him down, down from the ecstatic exaltation he had perceived in his new friend, Cézanne, a friend who could never fail, a friend upon whom no devastation could alight, a friend through whom he could never be clawed back into life. By the time he reached home he was completely exhausted, and begged his mother to make him a cup of strong tea. "What is it now?" Golda asked. "What is the trouble? There is always something new, and I think you will never be a man. For a man expects trouble and does not make himself ill over it." "I have quarrelled with Logan," said Mendel, dropping with relief into Yiddish as a barrier against the outer world, in which terrible things were always happening. "A good job too!" said Golda; "a good job too! He was no good to you. He only made you do the work that nobody likes. Now you can go back to the old way, and Mr. Froitzheim and Mr. Birnbaum will be pleased with you again. . . . You had better give up your friends. You are like a woman, the way you must always be in love with your friends. . . . But it is no good. Men will always fall in love, and then it is over with friendship. . . . Friends are only for moments. They come and disappear and come again. It is foolish to think you can keep them. . . . Is your head bad?" "Pretty bad." "You have not been drinking again?" "No. I've been leading a decent life. I expect it doesn't suit me." "Rubbish. . . . Rosa says the Christian girl has been to see you." He leaped to his feet. "Didn't she stay? Didn't you make her stay? What did she say? How did she look? Did she leave no message?" Golda smiled at him. "You had better go and see," she said. He darted from the room and across to his studio panting with excitement, persuading himself at every step that she was there, waiting for him, perhaps hiding to tease him, for she was a terrible tease. By the time he reached his studio he was so convinced that she was there that he hardly dared open the door. He pushed it open very gently and peered in. The room was empty, but he felt sure that she was there. He peeped round the corner into his bedroom. She was not there. He had to believe it, and came dejectedly back into the studio.