It is so with me. _J'ai les sangs
tournes d'elle_. Somebody has said something somewhere about the
passion of a man of forty. It must have to do with the French
phrase.
I pushed my coffee aside untasted, and buried my head in my
hands, longing, longing; eating my heart out for her. The hours
passed. When the servants were abed, I stole upstairs to her
room, left as it was on the night when Antoinette, hoping against
hope, had prepared it for her reception. I broke down. Heaven
knows what I did.
I returned to the drawing-room filled with the blind rage that
makes a man curse God and wish that he could die. The fire was
black, and I mechanically took up the poker to stir it. A
tempest of impotent anger shook my soul. I saw things red before
my eyes. I had an execrable lust to kill. I was alone amid a
multitude of gibbering fiends. As I stooped before the grate I
felt something scrabble my shoulders. I leapt back with a
shriek, and saw standing on the mantel-shelf a black, one-eyed
thing regarding me with an expression of infinite malice.
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