But she laughed and went with him.  Imagine that room—­foul air, sanded floor, kerosene lamps, an odour of bad wine, tobacco, and stale humanity.  Grimshaw pushed his way to a table and sat down with a surly Gascon and an enormous Negro from some American ship in the harbour.

They brought the poet wine but he did not drink it—­sat staring at the smoky ceiling, assailed by a sudden sharp vision of Dagmar and Waram at Broadenham, alone together for the first time, perhaps on the terrace in the starlight, perhaps in Dagmar’s bright room which had always been scented, warm, remote——­

He had been reciting, of course, in French.  Now he broke abruptly into English.  No one but the American Negro understood.  The proprietor shouted:  “Hi, there, Pilleux—­no gibberish!” The woman, her eyes on Grimshaw’s face, said warningly:  “Ssh!  He speaks English.  He is clever, this poet!  Pay attention.”  And the Negro, startled, jerked his drunken body straight and listened.

I don’t know what Grimshaw said.  It must have been a poem of home, the bitter longing of an exile for familiar things.  At any rate, the Negro was touched—­he was a Louisianian, a son of New Orleans.  He saw the gentleman, where you and I, perhaps, would have seen only a maudlin savage.  There is no other explanation for the thing that happened....

The Gascon, it seems, hated poetry.  He tipped over Grimshaw’s glass, spilling the wine into the woman’s lap.  She leaped back, trembling with rage, swearing in the manner of her kind.

“Quiet,” Grimshaw said.  And her fury receded before his glance; she melted, acquiesced, smiled.  Then Grimshaw smiled, too, and putting the glass to rights with a leisurely gesture, said, “Cabbage.  Son of pig,” and flipped the dregs into the Gascon’s face.

The fellow groaned and leaped.  Grimshaw didn’t stir—­he was too drunk to protect himself.  But the Negro saw what was in the Gascon’s hand.  He kicked back his chair, stretched out his arms—­too late.  The Gascon’s knife, intended for Grimshaw, sliced into his heart.  He coughed, looked at the man he had saved with a strange questioning, and collapsed.

Grimshaw was sobered instantly.  They say that he broke the Gascon’s arm before the crowd could separate them.  Then he knelt down by the dying Negro, turned him gently over and lifted him in his arms, supporting that ugly bullet head against his knee.  The Negro coughed again, and whispered:  “I saw it comin’, boss.”  Grimshaw said simply:  “Thank you.”

“I’m scared, boss.”

“That’s all right.  I’ll see you through.”

“I’m dyin’, boss.”

“Is it hard?”

“Yessir.”

“Hold my hand.  That’s right.  Nothing to be afraid of.”

The Negro’s eyes fixed themselves on Grimshaw’s face—­a sombre look came into their depths.  “I’m goin’, boss.”

Grimshaw lifted him again.  As he did so, he was conscious of feeling faint and dizzy.  The Negro’s blood was warm on his hands and wrists, but it was not wholly that—­He had a sensation of rushing forward; of pressure against his ear-drums; a violent nausea; the crowd of curious faces blurred, disappeared—­he was drowning in a noisy darkness....  He gasped, struggled, struck out with his arms, shouted, went down in that suffocating flood of unconsciousness....