"I'll starve to death first," said Oscar, turning to the door.
"Nonsense, old fellow! If the things were doing any good where they are I could respect your feelings. But they're not. They are merely rotting away and they will soon disappear altogether. What your object was in burying them you know best--I confess I thought it very quixotic--but whatever it was it has served its purpose. And now there they lie--works of genius, as I'm willing to believe--that might possibly make your name and begin to make your fortune, while you----"
"I'll die in a ditch rather than touch them," said Oscar, and without a word of farewell he flung out of the room.
No words could describe the agony he endured during the remaining hours of that day. The intoxication of the night before was gone by this time and he suffered the pains of the spirit that has buoyed itself up on a bankrupt hope. If he had ever had any uncertainty about the meaning of the blind impulse of remorse which had prompted him to bury his compositions in his wife's grave he had none now. It was God's own punishment to shut up the only channel to fame and success, nay to livelihood itself, as by the door of a tomb.
Hour after hour he walked the streets, feeling that escape from the way of life he had been living was now utterly hopeless. He would go down and down, day by day, little by little, until he was submerged beneath the flood, or became, but for the mercy of God, a vagabond and a castaway.
It was long before he could bring himself to go back to his lodging and when he did so he found that the street door would not open to the key he carried in his pocket. He rang the bell and a little maid-of-all-work came up as from her bedroom below stairs with curl papers in her hair and some loose clothes about her body.
"Why did you bolt the door, my child?" he said. "Didn't you know that I had not come home?"
"Yes, sir, but mistress told me to tell you as how your room has been let and you can have your trunks when you pay what you owes her."
"Do you mean that I am to be turned out?"
"It ain't my fault, sir, and I'm very sorry."