I curse myself
for my folly in entering the Hotel Metropole. The damned Turk
held me in the palm of his hand. He made mock of me to his
heart's content .... And Carlotta is in his power. I grow white
with terror when I think of _her_ terror. She is somewhere,
locked up in a room, in this great city. My God! Where can she
be?
The police must find her. London is not mediaeval Italy for
women to be gagged and carried off to inaccessible strongholds in
defiance of laws and government. I repeat to myself that she
must come back, that the sober working of English institutions
will restore her to my arms, that my agony is a matter of a day
or two at most, that the special license obtained this morning
and now lying before me is not the document of irony it seems,
and that in a week's time we shall look back on this nightmare of
a day with a smile, and look forward to the future with laughter
in our hearts.
But to-night I am very lonely. "Loneliness," says Epictetus, "is
a certain condition of the helpless man.
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