“I love you furiously, you wretched boy,” she exclaimed, and held him to her. “But just because you are an idiot, you are not to pay any heed to it.”
Rudolph for answer flung his arms round her, laid his head upon her bosom, and burst into wild hysteric sobs.
“Oh, you baby!” shouted Photini, trying to shake him off, but he only clung to her the more convulsively, and tightened his clasp of her until she could hardly breathe.
“Finish! this is absurd. What has happened to you, child?”
“Everybody is against me,” he said, striving hard to choke back his tears. “I hate myself. I have made a mess of everything, and I wish I were dead.”
“That is why you have come to me, I suppose. If you are destined to be damned in the next world, you are willing to begin the operation in this,” said Photini, drily.
“I want to stay with you. If you repulse me, Photini, I swear I’ll go straightway and blow my brains out.”
“It would not be much worse.”
“Than staying with you?”
“Yes, than staying with me. The one would be followed by an inquest and a funeral—and behold a swift and respectable end. The other—my friend, have you measured its consequences?”