In his place Armstrong settled back dumbly. Unconsciously he passed his handkerchief over his mouth. The hand that carried it trembled a bit.
“You really mean that, do you?” he groped, half to himself, “mean the break to be really final this time?” He shut his eyes, like a child suddenly awakened in the dark and afraid. “Somehow I hadn’t expected that at all, hadn’t planned on it. I suppose it was childish of me; but I’ve been taking things for granted, on the 312 strength of the past, and—and—” Of a sudden the rambling tongue halted. The eyes opened wide, unnaturally wide; and in their depths was again that new look of terror, but now magnified. “Tell me that you don’t mean it, Elice, really,” he pleaded. “I was just beginning to live and hope again; and now—tell me!”
Long before this the girl had ceased looking at him. Instead, with the instinctive fascination an open fire exerts over all human beings, she had turned toward the tiny jets of gas in the grate; her face propped in her hands she sat staring into the depths of the flame. She scarcely seemed to breathe, even when she spoke.
“Yes, I meant it,” she repeated patiently.
For a long time there was silence,—long enough with the man for the mood to pass, the mood of terror, and in reaction its antithesis, reckless abandon, to come in its stead. For come it did, as was inevitable; and heralding its approach sounded a laugh,—a sudden mirthless, sarcastic laugh.
“So this is the end of my day,” he said. He laughed again. “I might have known it was too good to last. What a fool I was to imagine 313 that just because one thing had come my way everything else was going to follow suit. What a poor, blithering fool!”
“Steve!” No lethargy in the girl’s figure now, in the face of a sudden turned toward him appealingly. “Don’t take it that way or say such things. Nothing has changed in the least. I’m still your friend, as I’ve always been; so is Harry Randall—and the rest. You’re still a successful writer; you’ve proved it to-day, and you’ll prove it further with the new book you’re working on now. I repeat, nothing has altered in the least. Don’t talk that way. It hurts me.”
In his chair, erect now, Armstrong merely smiled. But his color was higher than normal and the blue eyes were unnaturally bright.
“No, nothing has changed, I suppose,” he said evenly. “You’re right there. I’ve simply been in a trance—that’s all—and I’ve inadvertently come to. I seem to have the habit of doing that.” He smiled again, hopelessly cruel in his egotism. “Of course I have friendship, oceans of it, yours particularly, as I’ve had all the time. And success; it monopolizes the sky, fairly blots out the stars, and obscures the sun like an eclipse. There’s no end to the success 314 I have. It’s infinite. And still further, incentive: to be and to do and to fight.” The smile vanished. He could not mock in the face of that thought even yet. “Incentive! What a travesty. Elice, you’ve killed the last trace of incentive I had just now.”
“Steve!” The girl’s hands lifted imperiously. “Stop. Have you no pity?” She shook the swift-gathering flood from her eyes rebelliously and faced him fair. “You’ll be very sorry you said such things after you’ve had time to think,” she went on. “Don’t add regret to the rest to-night. Please don’t.”