Everything else in the room was conceived in an exuberance of luxury
that now had something of the macabre in it. It was that now--before, it
had been unclean. There was a great bed whose lines suggested sinking
softness, a glaring yellow satin coverlet, vast, like a sea. The walls
were covered with yellow satin, the windows draped with lace worth a
king's ransom, the light was softened, the air dead, the sounds hung
slumbrously. And, in the centre of it, that motionless body. It stirred,
pivoted on some central axis beneath the rug, and faced me sitting.
There was no look of inquiry in the bloodshot eyes--they turned dully
upon me, topaz-coloured in a blood-red setting. There was no expression
in the suffused face.

"You want?" he said, in a voice that was august by dint of hopelessness.

"I want to explain," I said. I had no idea that this was what I had come
for.

He answered only: "You!" He had the air of one speaking to something
infinitely unimportant. It was as if I had no inkling of the real issue.

With a bravery of desperation I began to explain that I hadn't stumbled
into the thing; that I had acted open-eyed; for my own ends ... "My own
ends." I repeated it several times. I wanted him to understand, and I
did explain. I kept nothing from him; neither her coming, nor her words,
nor my feelings. I had gone in with my eyes open.

For the first time Fox looked at me as if I were a sentient being. "Oh,
you know that much," he said listlessly.

"It's no disgrace to have gone under to her," I said; "we _had_ to." His