Why continue to play the martyr and follow the fruitless path of rectitude?
Hadn't she said, "I can only live once, and so I shall make life spin whichever way I want it to go ?" He could only live once, and if life was not to spin with her, let it spin without her.

"Who cares ?" he said to himself.

"Who the devil cares ?" He gave up his coat and hat, and went back into that room of false joy and syncopation.
It was one o'clock when he stood in the street once more, hot and wined and careless.

"Let's hit it up," he said to Oldershaw as the car moved away with the sisters and cousins of the other two men.

"I haven't started yet." The red-haired, roistering Oldershaw, newly injected with the virus of the Great White Way, clapped him on the back.