"Stop!" groaned Leo.
"Yes.... I don't doubt it would suit your ticket if I stopped. Health, Fritzchen!"
"I implore you not to go on."
"I dare say you are right, Fritzchen. It's hardly the subject for a convivial entertainment, eh? How did I hap on it? Through the devil, of course. You see, Fritzchen, that evening when he told me the story of you and her, I could hear her running about overhead I cried tears of blood for your soul, Fritzchen. For you were dearer to me than my own flesh and blood. But to-day I can't cry, Fritzchen, because I have drunk too much wine. You must forgive me, Fritzchen."
He tried to raise his fat fingers deprecatingly to Leo, but the great bulldog jowl dropped on his breast with a dull wheezing sound in his throat. He had fallen asleep.
Leo bowed his head in his hands, and stared across at him with burning, starting eyes.
"Thus grimly does the joke end," thought he, "that I permitted myself to play off on my conscience."
He shuddered. He fancied he too saw the glazing eyes of the dying man fixed on him, and heard the rattles in his throat--the man whose last curse had been for him. And the woman who had raved and ramped about in the locked guest-chamber above, who left her husband to die alone and forsaken like a dog, because she dared not approach him with her guilt-stained body. He could almost hear her sobs and whimperings coming through the ceiling.... And all that--all was his--his doing.
"It will drive me mad!" he cried, jumping to his feet.
He longed for the sound of a human voice, but only the snores of the drunken old man fell on his ear. He would have given anything to have some one to whom he could go to shriek out the torments in his breast; but he had no one--no one but that woman who had sinned with him.