A candle in the wind

by Mary Imlay Taylor

He had not slept for a long time. He had, indeed, been trying to break an ugly habit, but the horror of sleeplessness was greater than the horror of sleep. Sleep had its horror, for it brought dreams. Either he dreamed of the ice and snow and fog, of the unforgettable face of Overton, or he dreamed of sunshiny fields and the scent of spring flowers, and saw Diane coming to him, holding out her hands, with her eyes shining, as he had seen them shine once with love—as he would never see them again!

Good God, what a price to pay for one act of cowardice, one break in the fair, clean record of his life! Nothing he had done before, nothing that he could do now, would wipe it out—nothing but death! It was too much to bear. He would go out, and he would get sleep when he got back.

Then he remembered his chloral bottle. Was it full? He went to the drawer and reached for it. It was not there. He tried the dresser, the mantel, the table, the cabinet, finally his bedroom. It had gone.

He felt like a child robbed of its favorite toy, or a drunkard denied his dram. Some one had taken it, and he began to plan a tirade for the chambermaid or the bellboy. Then he remembered Dr. Gerry, and reddened with anger. Of course, the doctor had taken it!

The thought made Faunce stop short, sick with shame. Gerry was treating him like a bad child, or a sick man who had lost control of his will. Small as the thing was, it gave him a shock. It did more to rally him than a thousand arguments. It was a delicate way of making a lesson perceptible even to a diseased brain. He knew now how he had craved a drug that would deaden his pain, lessen his resistance, go on making him a coward.

He straightened himself and stood staring vacantly into the mirror over the dresser. It was a long while before he became aware of his own image, and then he was shocked by it. His face was white and lined, the face of a man who had aged ten years. A new kind of agony that was half self-pity shot through him. He was a forsaken man, a man who was existing by the sufferance of another, whose very honors were at the mercy of another, who had lost all and saved nothing, not even love.

It was a moment of mortal anguish, but it passed. He turned abruptly, opened a drawer, and, slipping his hand back in the corner, laid it upon his pistol. As he did so, a slight sound startled him. Some one had opened the door in the outer room. He remembered now that he had not locked it.

He withdrew his hand quickly and shut the drawer. Then he walked to the arch between the two rooms. The lamp was still burning brightly on the table in the center, and his cigarette-case lay open beside it; beyond that circle of light the room was less brilliant. It seemed to be pervaded by the varied colors of the lights in the street below, by a breath of fresh air, and the clamor of the life outside.

Beyond this, on the threshold of the outer door, stood a figure which seemed to him, at first, part of his own imaginings, a specter of his dreams.

“Diane!” he said blankly.