Without taking his eyes off me, as if fearing that I might run away, Magnus paced the room, finally seating himself opposite Me. His face grew dim and his voice seemed tired, when he said:
“But it seems to me that I am exciting myself in vain....”
“Do not forget, Magnus, that to-day I myself spoke to you of indifference.”
He waved his hand wearily and carelessly.
“Yes, you did speak. But there is something else involved here, Wondergood. There is nothing insulting in the indifference, but in the other...I sensed it immediately upon your appearance with your billions. I do not know whether you will understand what I mean, but I immediately felt like shouting of hatred and to demand gallows and blood. The gallows is a gloomy thing but the curious jostling about the gallows, Mr. Wondergood, are quite unbearable! I do not know what they think of our game here in the ‘place’ you come from, but we pay for it with our lives, and when there suddenly appears before us some curious gentleman in a top hat, cigar in mouth, one feels, you understand, like seizing him by the back of his neck and...he never stays to the end of the performance, anyway. Have you, too, Mr. Wondergood, dropped in on us for a brief visit?”
With what a long sigh I uttered the name of Maria!... And I no longer played, I no longer lied, when I replied to this gloomy man:
“Yes, I have dropped in on you for a brief visit, Signor Magnus. You have guessed right. For certain very valid reasons I can reveal nothing to you of the white pages of my life, the existence of which behind my leather binding you have likewise guessed. But on one of them was written: death-departure. That was not a top hat in the hands of the curious visitor, but a revolver...you understand: I look on as long as it is interesting and after that I make my bow and depart. Let me put it clearer and simpler, out of deference to your realism: in a few days, perhaps to-morrow, I depart for the other world.... No, that is not clear enough: in a few days or to-morrow I shall shoot myself, kill myself with a revolver. I at first planned to aim at my heart but have decided that the brain would be more reliable. I have planned all this long ago, at the very beginning...of my appearance before you, and was it not in this readiness of mine to depart that you have detected ‘inhuman’ indifference? Isn’t it true that when one eye is directed upon the other world, it is hardly possible to maintain any particularly bright flame in the eye directed upon this world?... I refer to the kind of flame I see in your eyes. O! you have wonderful eyes, Signor Magnus.”
Magnus remained silent for a few moments and then said:
“And Maria?”
“Permit me to reply. I prize Signorina Maria too highly not to regard her love for me as a fatal mistake.”