Enter Gould,—“Now proceed with that story of yours.”
Hearn,—pacifying the fury of the ganglionic centres with the most extreme possible difficulty, timidly observes,—
“But you don’t care to hear it?”
Gould,—moving with inconceivable rapidity, dynamically overcharged,—
“Of course, I do: I’m just dying to hear it.”
Hearn, running after him, skipping preliminaries in the anguish of “hope deferred which maketh the heart sick,”—
“Well, it was in the Rue du Bois Morier,—one of the steepest and strangest streets in the world, full of fantastic gables, and the shadows of—”
Gould,—“Yes, I’ll be out in a minute.” (Vanishes through a shop entrance.)
(Inexpressible chaos and bewilderment of impulses afferent and efferent,—electrical collisions in the ganglia,—unspeakable combustion of tissue in the intercorrelating fibres,—paralysis of conflicting emotions,—unutterable anguish: coma followed by acute mania in the person of Hearn.)