"Your father? That creature ... your father...."
"Yes," he cried wildly—"he is my father. I am George Copplestone Winslowe. Do you wonder that I hate him? I am the victim of his vices—the heir to his sins. He has left me the legacy of outraged nature. I am mad."
She recoiled from him, panting. He was beside himself. His face was distorted; madness glared in his eyes. Then, suddenly, the paroxysm left him. He turned to her weakly, with the appeal of his utter despair.
"Pity me," he said. "Oh, if you are capable of pitying anything in this dreadful world, pity me! My awful inheritance is closing in on me. Every day one more grain of reason leaves me. Like him, I might have been a leader of men. Like him, I have power and capability. I have a brain that could have raised me to the greatest heights. I have a body that can bear any strain. But I am mad."
His agony was pitiful. He sobbed, wringing his hands.
"I can feel the hideous thing growing in me, hour by hour—a little more—a little more. I can feel its clutch tightening on me. And I can't resist. I can't escape. The little mental balance I have is being dragged away from me. In a few years—if I let myself live to it—I shall be a babbling maniac. Nothing can save me. I knew it when I was a boy—before that thing there completely lost its reason. I knew I was born a madman for my father's sins. It crept on me gradually—one sign after another—one horrible secret impulse after another. The slow, sure growth of madness." He buried his face in his hands. "Oh, God! Oh, God!"
In the silence that followed the figure on the chair straightened itself with a jerk, and gibbered at him, twitching spasmodically. The woman turned away, shaking.
"I live in hell," he moaned—"in all the torment of the uttermost hell. I fly from one thing to another for respite, for relief—but there is no relief. I can only make madness of them all. Everything twists and turns in my hands. I can keep nothing straight." Then another gust of passion seized him. He shouted, beating his hands together. "What right," he cried furiously, "have men and women to marry and bequeath disease and madness to their children? What right have they to propagate the rottenness of their minds and bodies? It's worse than murder. It's the cruelest, the most wicked, of all crimes. What are the feelings of a child to such parents? Is it not to hate them—as I hate that foul thing there?—to curse them, as I curse him, with every breath?" His arms dropped limply to his sides. "What is the use of hating?" he said dully. "It can't cure me. It can't cure me."
"Well?" he asked bitterly. "You know the secrets of my house. Are you satisfied?"