"It is not I who will send you mad," he said. "She will do it in good time. She has done it to others—she has done it to me. That is why I tried to kill her. That is why I may not rest until I have killed her. Don't you know why I wanted that money? She was at the Priory, and I walked there, to see her for a moment, to hear her voice. I hid in the grounds—it was two days before I saw her. Then she shrank away from me as though I were some unclean animal. She would not look at me, nor suffer me to speak. I had no right, she said, to come into her presence in such a state. I was to come decently dressed, in my right mind—then she might talk with me. But a creature in rags! It wasn't kind, was it? I had waited so long, and I was what she had made me. So I went across the hills to Feldwick, and I wrote a note to my father. He tore it into small pieces unread. So I came by night, a thief, and you also were there by night, a thief. The same night, too. It was queer.
"I do not want to hear any more," Douglas said, with a shiver. "I thought that you were dead."
"I have an excellent recipe for immortality," was the slow, bitter answer. "I desire to die."
"There are your sisters," Douglas said slowly. "They are in London.
After all, you did not mean to kill him."
The man shook his head.
"I have no sisters," he said, "nor any kin."
"Why not Africa, and a fresh start?" Douglas said. "I am poor, but I can help you, and I can borrow a bit—enough for your passage and clothes, at any rate."
No thanks—no sign even of having heard. The man had moved to the window. He seemed fascinated by the view. There was a silence between them. Then he waved his hand towards that red glow which hung like a mist of fire over the city.
"A cauldron," he muttered, "a seething cauldron of stinking vice and imperishable iniquity. Once I lodged somewhere near here. I have stood at a window like this by the hour, and my heart has leaped like a boy's at the sound of that roar. Douglas, those old Methodists up in the hill-village were not so far from the truth—not so far from the truth, after all. How I laughed when they wagged their old grey heads and told me that the great South road was the road to Hell."
Life is what we make it, here or in the hills Douglas said, with a sententiousness which sounded to himself like ugly irony.