There was Egholm’s smoke-consumer, that would make the atmosphere of great cities as pure as the purest sea air.
There was ... but, no; it was enough. These three supreme inventions of his were in themselves sufficient to condemn that God up there!
Plainly, God was not disposed to help: He kept down genius out of sheer envy.
Egholm walked into the woods, beating his breast and threatening high Heaven. Once he happened to strike himself on the mouth, and this set his thoughts off in an entirely new direction, where they tore away even more furiously, and flung themselves cascading into headlong depths.
The blow had reminded him of that last affair with Anna—yesterday morning, was it, or the day before?
“It’s a lie!” he hissed, kicking at a root. “A downright lie, fostered in a venomous woman’s brain. Her nose came on to bleed, that was all. Just an ordinary case of nose-bleeding, that happened to come on at the same time. But, of course, she made the most of it. I didn’t do anything worse than”—here he lashed out with his stick—“other days, but then she starts screaming hysterically, and there’s the blood trickling down through her fingers. Ugly—horrible....”
What was that?
Egholm came to a standstill in the middle of the path, and looked round with staring eyes.
What was this? Was he to be haunted now, in broad daylight? Surely it might at least have the decency to wait till night?