"As no one cared," he said with a short laugh, "what did it matter?"
"You were lost to the world—had vanished completely," she went on.
"Sometimes I thought—feared you were dead." Her voice changed.
"Feared?" he repeated. "Ah, yes! You did not want me to go out like that."
"No," she said slowly. "Not like that."
He looked at her comprehendingly; in spite of the bitter passionate repudiation of him, she had been a little in earnest—had cared, in the least, how he went down.
"Why," he said, with a forced smile, "I didn't think you'd bother to give the matter a thought."
"You had some purpose?" she persisted, studying him. "I see—seem to feel it now. It all—you—were incomprehensible. I mean, when I saw you again that first time, in New York, after so long—"
"It was funny, wasn't it?" he said with rather strained lightness. "The Chariot of Concord—What's the Matter with Mother?—the gaping or jibing crowd—then you, going by—"
Her eyelids drooped; he stood now erect and motionless; in spite of the determination to maintain that matter-of-fact pose, visions appeared momentarily in his eyes. The glamour of the instant he had referred to caught him. All he had felt then at the unexpected sight of her—beautiful, far-away—returned to him. She was near now, but still immeasurably distant. He pulled himself together; he hadn't explained very much yet. He was forced to go on; her eyes once more seemed to draw the story from him.
"Yes; I had some purpose in going away like that. The idea came to me at the sanatorium, when I was about 'all in'. They'd managed to keep the drugs and the drink from me, and one day I seemed to wake up and realize I hadn't ever really lived. Just been a tail-ender who had 'gone the pace'. Hadn't even had a beginning. Was it too late to start over again? Probably." His voice came in crisp accents. "But it was a last chance—a feeble one—a straw to the drowning," he laughed. "That sounds absurd to you but I don't know how to explain it better."