He points angrily to the secretary, who cowers before his angry look, yet shows no intention of retiring. With all his air of hopeless sottishness, that clings to him like a spotted garment, there is still something strange about the man that attracts the attention of Mark Gore. He has been closely watching him ever since his entrance, and he can see that the head usually buried in the chest is now uplifted, that in the sunken eyes there is a new meaning, a fire freshly kindled, born of acute mental disturbance; and indeed in his whole bearing there is a settled purpose very foreign to it.
"Hear me, hear me!" he entreats, with quivering accents, but passionate haste. "Do not send me away yet, I must speak now—now, or never!"
The final word sinks almost out of hearing. His hands fall to his sides. Once again his head sinks to its old place upon his breast. Sir Christopher, believing him to be again under the influence of drink, opens his lips with the evident intention of ordering him from his presence, when Sir Mark interposes.
"He has come to say something. Let him say it," he says, tapping Sir Christopher's arm persuasively.
"Ay, let me," says Slyme, in a low tone, yet always with the remnant of a wasted passion in it. "It has lain heavy on my heart for years. I shall fling it from me now, if the effort to do it kills me."
Turning his bleared eyes right and left, he searches every face slowly until he comes to Fabian. Here his examination comes to an end. Fastening his eyes on Fabian, he lets them rest there, and never again removes them during the entire interview. He almost seems to forget, or to be unaware, that there is any other soul in the room, save the man at whom he is gazing so steadfastly. It is to him alone he addresses himself.
"I call you to witness," he says, now striking himself upon his breast, "that whatever I have done has not gone unpunished. If my crime has been vile, my sufferings have been terrible. I have endured torments. I want no sympathy—none. I expect only detestation and revenge, but yet I would have you remember that there was a time when I was a man, not the soddened, brutish, contemptible thing I have become. I would ask you to call to mind all you have ever heard about remorse; its stings, its agony, its despair, and I would have you know that I have felt it all; yea, more, a thousand times more!"
All this time he has had his hand pressed against his chest in a rigid fashion. His lips have grown livid, his face pale as any corpse.
"This is mere raving," exclaims Sir Christopher, excitedly; but again Gore restrains him as he would have gone forward to order Slyme to retire.
"To-day," goes on Slyme, always with his heavy eyes on Fabian, "I heard you speak in my defence—mine! Sir, if you could only know how those words of yours burned into my heart, how they have burned since, how they are burning now," smiting himself, "you would be half avenged. I listened to you till my brain could bear no more. You spoke kindly of me, you had pity on my old age—upon mine, who had no pity on your youth, who ruthlessly ruined your life, who—"