“That is the curtain of my story. I could begin at the beginning and make it a long one, but what’s the use? I could make a romance of it, or even a tragedy, and now that I am my sane self I could even make it a comedy. I could go over the list of things he promised me and what he promised to do for me, and you would think he had all the wealth of the Bank of England at his back, but his mind ran in a groove so narrow and his manner was so offensive that the only thing that kept him in the human being class was the fact that his nostrils were not shaped like those of a swine, and that instead of grunting he used language that was fairly intelligible. But for once he was toppled from his self-built pedestal and he crashed down in the wreck of his own self-conceit. Men like that make the world seem immoral and immoral in fact, and a few such as he would degrade the noblest profession in the world. Egotists and atheists, believing in nothing save self, they taint a community like a plague.
“Bring us some more beer, Billy, for I’m going home. I’m tired and dead to the world.”
“I wouldn’t like to be the man you hated,” said Ferguson.
“My boy, I can neither hate nor love, I am simply numb. I have had seven proposals of marriage, both in the profession and out of it, but there was nothing doing. I am absolutely emotionless. I ask no favors on account of my sex and I owe my allegiance to no man. But I am watching my tormentor growing gradually old. I see him once in a while, you know, and I am keeping track of him. It’s my one joy in life. The gray has come into his hair and it is turning white and the wrinkles are spreading themselves over his face like avenging fingers. I know he is not really happy, although he pretends to be, and some day, in some luxurious apartment, he’ll lie dying. A million dollars will not give him one more breath nor would a hundred millions add one more day to his existence, and when he is very close to that gate which always opens inward and from which there is no retreat and I really know that he is going, then I will laugh; not the kind of a laugh you know, boys, but the kind of a laugh that follows a soul across the border line of death and which keeps echoing for ages.”
“Did you ever play the part of Ophelia?” I asked.
“No, but I could.”
And we all believed her.
A TWISTED LOVE AFFAIR
This is the story of a wooing that went astray.