Erik Dorn. Ben Hecht

he found himself alone, looking into a night that was haunted with an image of her. He remembered her going, but it seemed to him he still saw her against the window, his eyes bringing to him a vision of her face as she had looked.

      He had grown white. In the memory of her face, as in an impossible mirror, he saw a loathsome image of himself. Her eyes had blazed with it. He sickened and his thought grew faint. Then the night came before him and the echo of the words Rachel had spoken beat in his head. He walked with his hat politely in his hand out of the door.

      On the stairs his eyes grew weak and warm. Tears rushed from them. He stumbled and clutched at the banister. She had led him on. She had looked at him with love. Love … but he had dreamed that. What was it, then? Her eyes burning toward him had told him he was loathsome. There was something wrong with him. He wept. He put his hat on mechanically. He dried his eyes. There was something wrong.

      On her bed Rachel lay mumbling to herself, mumbling as if the words were a pain to her ears. "Erik Dorn … Erik Dorn."