No; it was here. The same old story from his sleepless nights; the fights with Anna over again. Every word that had been spoken between them. And then, at the decisive moment—the loved and detested face of Clara Steen rising up to take the blows—Clara’s white fingers vainly trying to stop that crimson stream.... Clara’s eyes, looking at him....
“I must be ill, I think,” he murmured to himself. “And there’s a nasty pain here in the middle of my chest. Throbbing and throbbing like anything. Not quite in the middle, though—no, a little to the left.”
He burst out into a wild laugh and beat his forehead with the back of his hand.
Not so strange, after all, that it should be more to the left. The heart was on the left side. Ha ha! yes, he was a witty fellow, after all!
But the drama was still going on before his eyes. Oh, but he would not see it. No, no—not here in the daytime. For the love of God, let the curtain fall! Leave it till the night, when all sorts of things happened anyway, beyond understanding. Here, in the middle of the road, he could not go smashing pictures in broad daylight. It was too much to ask.
And—well, he was ready to admit, if that would help at all, that it wasn’t just ordinary nose-bleeding. No, Heaven help him, he had struck her with all his force right across nose and mouth. Well, then, now he had confessed. Wasn’t that enough?
Where was the sense of being an inventor and a natural healer, if he could not find a pain-killer for his own case?
Still, perhaps he might, after all. Suppose, now, he were to make one smart cut and tear that beating heart right out, all would be well.
Next moment he sawed the fancy across with a grin. Ugh! poetic nonsense!
No—but there was something else—something far better....