They chatted awhile about music. They had known each other, had been
fairly intimate, and had since become strangers. Hampson excused himself
for having addressed Siegmund: 'I saw you with your nose flattened against the window,' he said, 'and
as I had mine in the same position too, I thought we were fit to be
re-acquainted.' Siegmund looked at the man in astonishment.
'I only mean you were staring rather hard at nothing. It's a pity to try
and stare out of a beautiful blue day like this, don't you think?' 'Stare beyond it, you mean?' asked Siegmund.
'Exactly!' replied the other, with a laugh of intelligence. 'I call a
day like this "the blue room". It's the least draughty apartment in all
the confoundedly draughty House of Life.' Siegmund looked at him very intently. This Hampson seemed to express
something in his own soul.
'I mean,' the man explained, 'that after all, the great mass of life
that washes unidentified, and that we call death, creeps through the
blue envelope of the day, and through our white tissue, and we can't
stop it, once we've begun to leak.' 'What do you mean by "leak"?' asked Siegmund.
'Goodness knows--I talk through my hat. But once you've got a bit tired
of the house, you glue your nose to the windowpane, and stare for the
dark--as you were doing.' 'But, to use your metaphor, I'm not tired of the House--if you mean
Life,' said Siegmund.
'Praise God! I've met a poet who's not afraid of having his pocket
picked--or his soul, or his brain!' said the stranger, throwing his head
back in a brilliant smile, his eyes dilated.
'I don't know what you mean, sir,' said Siegmund, very quietly, with a
strong fear and a fascination opposing each other in his heart.
'You're not tired of the House, but of your own particular room-say,
suite of rooms--' 'Tomorrow I am turned out of this "blue room",' said Siegmund with a wry
smile. The other looked at him seriously.
'Dear Lord!' exclaimed Hampson; then: 'Do you remember Flaubert's saint,
who laid naked against a leper? I could _not_ do it.' 'Nor I,' shuddered Siegmund.
'But you've got to-or something near it!' Siegmund looked at the other with frightened, horrified eyes.
'What of yourself?' he said, resentfully.
'I've funked-ran away from my leper, and now am eating my heart out, and
staring from the window at the dark.' 'But can't you _do_ something?' said Siegmund.