"Rolfe, if I hadn't had you to send for, I should have been dead by now. There's poison enough in this place. It has tempted me fearfully."
"What, is it?" asked the other, in a not very sympathetic voice. His own troubles of the past month made mere love-miseries seem artificial.
"I shall have to tell you what I wanted to tell you long ago. If I had, most likely this would never have happened.--It's all over with me, Rolfe. I wish to God you had let me die in that hotel at Brussels.--She has been told something about me, and there's an end of everything. She sent for me this morning. I never thought she could be so pitiless.--The kind of thing that a man thinks nothing of. And herself the cause of it, if only I had dared to tell her so!"
'The old story, I suppose,' said Harvey. 'Some other woman?'
'I was very near telling you, that day you came to my beastly garret in Chelsea; do you remember? It was the worst time with me then—except when you found me in Brussels. I'd been gambling again; you knew that. I wanted money for something I felt ashamed to speak of.—You know the awful misery I used to suffer about Henrietta. I was often enough nearly mad with—what is one to call it? Why isn't there a decent name for the agony men go through at that age? I simply couldn't live alone any longer—I couldn't; and only a fool and a hypocrite would pretend to blame me. A man, that is; women seem to be made different.—Oh, there's nothing to tell. The same thing happens a hundred times every day in London. A girl wandering about in the Park—quarrel at home—all the rest of it. A good many lies on her side; a good deal of selfishness on mine. I happened to have money just then. And just when I had no money—about the time you met me—a child was born. She said it was mine; anyway, I had to be responsible. Of course I had long ago repented of behaving so badly to Henrietta. But no woman can understand, and it's impossible to explain to them. You're a beast and a villain, and there's an end of it.'
'And how has this become known to Miss Winter?' Harvey inquired, seeing that Morphew lost himself in gloom.
'You might almost guess it; these things always happen in the same way. You've heard me speak of a fellow called Driffel—no? I thought I might have mentioned him. He got to know the girl. He and I were at a music-hall one night, and she met us; and I heard, soon after, that she was living with him. It didn't last long. She got ill, and wrote to me from Westminster Hospital; and I was foolish enough to give her money again, off and on, up to only a few months ago. She talked about living a respectable life, and so on, and I couldn't refuse to help her. But I found out it was all humbug, and of course I stopped. Then she began to hunt me, Out of spite. And she heard from someone—Driffel, as likely as not—all about Henrietta; and yesterday Henrietta had a letter from her. This morning I was sent for, to explain myself.'
'At one time, then, you had lost sight of her altogether?'
'She has always had money from me, more or less regularly, except at the time that Driffel kept her. But there has been nothing else between us, since that first year. I kept up payments on account of the child, and she was cheating me in that too. Of course she put out the baby to nurse, and I understood it lived on; but the truth was it died after a month or two—starved to death, no doubt. I only learnt that, by taking a good deal of trouble, when she was with Driffel.'
'Starved to death at a month or two old,' murmured Rolfe. 'The best thing for it, no doubt.'