She started to speak but he checked her.
“I think I would be willing to make a substantial endowment to any Protestant Church that still really believed in hell,” he said, “because that was very like hell—six years ago.”
Intensity began to come into his voice like a color of darkness, though he still spoke slowly.
“You can stand nearly everything in life but being tired of yourself. And six years ago I was tired—tired to death.”
Her hand reached over and touched him medicinally.
“I suppose I had no right” he began again and then stopped. “No, I think the strong man tires less easily but more wholly than the weak one when he does tire. And I was strong enough.
“I'd played a big game, you know. When my father died we hadn't much left but position—and that was going. I don't blame my father—he wasn't a business man—he should have been a literary critic—that little book of essays of his still sells, you know; not much but there's a demand for a dozen copies every year and that's a good deal for an American who's been dead for thirty. Well, that's where the children get their liking for things like that—I've got it too, a little—I could have done something there if I'd had time. But I never had time.
“I could have done it when I got out of Harvard—drifted along like half a dozen people I know, played at law, played at writing, played always and forever at being a gentleman—ended up as an officer of the Century Club with what little money I had in an annuity. But I couldn't stand the idea of just scraping along. And for nearly ten years I put those things aside.
“You know about my going West and the way I lived there. It wasn't easy when I'd been at Harvard and gone everywhere in New York and Boston—starting in so far below the bottom that you couldn't even see the bottom unless you squinted your eyes. But I never took a job with more money if I thought I could learn anything in a job with less—and every place I went I stayed until I could handle the job of the man two places ahead of me—and if I didn't get his job when I asked for it I went somewhere else. I don't think I read a book except a technical one for the first five years. And after that, when the chain-stores started going they asked me back to New York—a big offer too—but it wasn't the kind I wanted and I threw it down. I knew just how I wanted to come back to New York and that's the way I came.
“I don't suppose my morals were too edifying those years. But they were as good as the men I went with and I kept myself in hand. I saw men go to pieces with drink—and I didn't drink. I saw men go to pieces over women—and I kept away from that kind of woman. A man has to have women in his life no matter how much you talk about it—but I took the kind with the price-tag because when you paid them you were through. I could have married a dozen times if I'd wanted but I didn't want—that old hocus-pocus of tradition was still with me, stronger than death—I thought I knew the kind of wife I wanted and she was in the East.