Dr. Gerry grunted.
“You’ll do that without my help, at the rate you’re going.”
Faunce laughed bitterly again.
“You mean with chloral? I stopped it for a while, but I couldn’t sleep. I can’t, with this thing pursuing me. I thought I would pay off the score, and get free of it; but there’s my wife—I had to think of her. If she stays away, if she will have a divorce, then”—he threw back his head and drew a long breath—“then I’ll cut loose!”
“You mean, you’ll give it all away, and bear the odium, rather than stay bound to Overton?”
Faunce nodded, rising, and tossing his dead cigar out of the window. As he did so, he stood for a moment staring out, his view commanding the long street, closely flanked with great buildings, which narrowed in the far perspective until the high walls seemed to meet in a blur of blazing lights. It was as if he looked into the wide mouth of a funnel, lined with jewels, and it seemed that all these living, moving atoms, brute and human, must either be crowded or pushed through a tiny opening at the farther end or strangle in it.
Faunce was aware of it, aware of the clamor and the struggle of it, of the leap with which that crowd would launch itself upon the fallen, as a pack of wolves upon a wounded comrade, tearing and trampling the man who failed under its eager, cruel, predatory feet. He turned with a gesture of disgust.
“At the price I’m paying, life isn’t worth living!” he exclaimed.
Gerry rose from his seat and began to potter around the room. He did not even look toward Faunce, but he was aware of it when the younger man went to the table to take another cigar. While his back was turned, the doctor picked up a small, dark bottle from the dresser and dropped it into his pocket; then he found his hat.
“Don’t pay the price,” he said, as he held out his hand to Faunce.