"And you did not get weary of it?" asked Lefevre.
"Weary of it? No! I returned to it always, after a pause of a few days for the reinvigoration I needed,—I returned to it with all the freshness of youth, with the advantage which, of course, mere youth can never have,—an amazingly rich experience. I revelled in the full lap of life. I passed through many lands, civilised and barbaric; but it was my especial delight to strike down to that simple, passionate, essential nature which lies beneath the thickest lacquer of refinements in our civilised societies. Oh, what a life it was!—what a life!
"But a change came: it must have been growing on me for some time without my knowledge. I commonly removed from society when I felt exhaustion coming on me; but on one occasion it chanced that I stayed on in the pleasant company I was in (I was then in Vienna). I did not exactly feel ill; I felt merely weary and languid, and thought that presently I would go to bed. Gradually I began to observe that the looks of my companions were bent strangely on me, and that the expression of their countenances more and more developed surprise and alarm. 'What is the matter with you all?' I demanded; when they instantly cried, 'What is the matter with you? Have you been poisoned?' I rose and went and looked in a mirror; I saw, with ghastly horror, what I was like, and I knew then that I was doomed. I fled from that company for ever. I saw that, when the alien life on which I flourished was gone out of me, I was a worn old man—that the Fire of Life which usually burned in my body, making me look bright and young, was now none of it my own; a few hot ashes only were mine, which Death sat cowering by! I could not but sit and gaze at the reflection of the seared ghastliness of that face, which was mine and yet not mine, and feel well-nigh sick unto death. After a while, however, I plucked up heart. I considered that it was impossible this change had come all at once; I must have looked like that—or almost like that—once or twice or oftener before, and yet life and reinvigoration had gone on as they had been wont. I wrapped myself well up, and went out. I found a fit subject. I replenished my life as theretofore; my youthful, fresh appearance returned, and my confidence with it. I refused to look again upon my own, my worn face, from that time until tonight.
"But alarm again seized me about a year ago, when I chanced by calculation to note that my periods of abounding life were gradually getting shorter,—that I needed reinvigoration at more frequent intervals;—not that I did not take as much from my subjects as formerly—on the contrary, I seemed to take more—but that I lost more rapidly what I took, as if my body were becoming little better than a fine sieve. The last stage of all was this that you are familiar with, when my subjects began to be so utterly exhausted as to attract public notice. Yet that is not what has given me pause, and made me resolve to bring the whole weary, selfish business to an end. Could I not have gone elsewhere—anywhere, the wide world over—and lived my life? But I was kept, I was tethered here, to this London by a feeling I had never known before. Call it by the common fool's name of Love; call it what you will. I was fascinated by your sister Nora, even as others had been fascinated by me, even as I had been in my youth by the bountiful, gracious beauty of Nature."
"I have wanted to ask you," said Lefevre, "for an explanation of your conduct towards Nora. Why did you—with your awful life—life which, as you say, was not your own, and your extraordinary secret—why did you remain near her, and entangle her with your fascinations? What did you desire?—what did you hope for?"
"I scarcely know for what I hoped. But let me speak of her; for she has traversed and completely eclipsed my former vision of Nature. I have told you what my point of view was,—alone in the midst of Nature. I was for myself the only consciousness in the world, and all the world besides was merely a variety of material and impression, to be observed and known, to be interested in and delighted with. I was thus lonely, lonely as a despot, when Nora, your sister, appeared to me, and instantly I became aware there was another consciousness in the world as great as, or greater than, my own,—another person than myself, a person of supreme beauty and intelligence and faculty. She became to me all that Nature had been, and more. She expressed for me all that I had sought to find diffused through Nature, and at the same time she stood forth to me as an equal of my own kind, with as great a capacity for life. At first I had a vision of our living and reigning together, so to say, though the word may seem to you absurd; but I soon discovered that there was a gulf fixed between us,—the gulf of the life I had lived; she stood pure where I had stood a dozen years ago. So, gradually, she subverted my whole scheme of life; more and more, without knowing it, she made me see and judge myself with her eyes, till I felt altogether abased before her. But that which finally stripped the veil from me, and showed me myself as the hateful incarnation of relentlessly devouring Self, was my influence upon her, which culminated in the event of last night. Can you conceive how I was smitten and pierced with horror by the discovery that rose on me like a nightmare, that even on her sweet, pure, sumptuous life, I had unwittingly begun to prey? For that discovery flung wide the door of the future and showed me what I would become.
"Beautiful, calm, divine Nora! If I could but have continued near her without touching her, to delight in the thought and the sight of her, as one delights in the wind and the sunshine! But it could not be. I could only appear fit company for her if I refreshed and strengthened myself as I had been wont; but my new disgust of myself, and pity for my victims, made me shudder at the thought. What then? Here I am, and the time has come (as that old doctor said it would) when death appears more beautiful and friendly and desirable than life. Forgive me, Lefevre—forgive me on Nora's part,—and forgive me in the name of human nature."
Lefevre could not reply for the moment. He sat convulsed with heartrending sobs. He put out his hand to Julius.
"No, no!" exclaimed Julius, "I must not take your hand. You know I must not."
"Take my hand," cried Lefevre. "I know what it means. Take my life! Leave me but enough to recover. I give it you freely, for I wish you to live. You shall not die. By heaven! you shall not die. O Julius, Julius! why did you not tell me this long ago? Science has resource enough to deliver you from your mistake."