When I woke up, perplexed at first, but gradually remembering where I
was, and what had occurred to me, the realistic and uncompromising light
of dawn had commenced its pitiless inquiry, and it fell on the brass
knob, which I had noticed a few hours before, from the other room, and
on another brass knob a few feet away. My eyes smarted; I had
disconcerting sensations at the back of my head; my hair was brittle,
and as though charged with a dull electricity; I was conscious of actual
pain, and an incubus, crushing but intangible, lay heavily, like a
physical weight, on my heart. After the crest of the wave the trough--it
must be so; but how profound the instinct which complains! I listened. I
could hear his faint, regular breathing. I raised myself carefully on
one elbow and looked at him. He was as beautiful in sleep as in
consciousness; his lips were slightly parted, his cheek exquisitely
flushed, and nothing could disarrange that short, curly hair. He slept
with the calmness of the natural innocent man, to whom the assuaging of
desires brings only content.

I felt that I must go, and hastily, frantically. I could not face him
when he woke; I should not have known what to say; I should have been
abashed, timid, clumsy, unequal to myself. And, moreover, I had the
egoist's deep need to be alone, to examine my soul, to understand it
intimately and utterly. And, lastly, I wanted to pay the bill of pleasure
at once. I could never tolerate credit; I was like my aunt in that.
Therefore, I must go home and settle the account in some way. I knew not
how; I knew only that the thing must be done. Diaz had nothing to do with
that; it was not his affair, and I should have resented his interference.
Ah! when I was in the bill-paying mood, how hard I could be, how stony,
how blind! And that morning I was like a Malay running amok.

Think not that when I was ready to depart I stopped and stooped to give