As I was leaving the house next morning, I gave Sanders this note for her:
“I have gone to live at the Downtown Hotel. When you have decided what course to take, let me know. If my 'rights' ever had any substance, they have starved away to such weak things that they collapse even as I try to set them up. I hope your freedom will give you happiness, and me peace.”
“You are ill, sir?” asked my old servant, my old friend, as he took the note.
“Stay with her, Sanders, as long as she wishes,” said I, ignoring his question. “Then come to me.”
His look made me shake hands with him. As I did it, we both remembered the last time we had shaken hands—when he had the roses for my home-coming with my bride. It seemed to me I could smell those roses.
XXXII. LANGDON COMES TO THE SURFACE
I shall not estimate the vast sums it cost the Roebuck-Langdon clique to maintain the prices of National Coal, and so give plausibility to the fiction that the public was buying eagerly. In the third week of my campaign, Melville was so deeply involved that he had to let the two others take the whole burden upon themselves.
In the fourth week, Langdon came to me.
The interval between his card and himself gave me a chance to recover from my amazement. When he entered he found me busily writing. Though I had nerved myself, it was several seconds before I ventured to look at him. There he stood, probably as handsome, as fascinating as ever, certainly as self-assured. But I could now, beneath that manner I had once envied, see the puny soul, with its brassy glitter of the vanity of luxury and show. I had been somewhat afraid of myself—afraid the sight of him would stir up in me a tempest of jealousy and hate; as I looked, I realized that I did not know my own nature. “She does not love this man,” I thought. “If she did or could, she would not be the woman I love. He deceived her inexperience as he deceived mine.”