"I passed within twenty inches of the door. 'If I say good-night to them,
and go in,' I asked myself, 'what will happen?' And I was all a-tingle for
that word with Gurker.
"I could not answer that question in the tangle of my other problems.
'They will think me mad,' I thought. 'And suppose I vanish now!---Amazing
disappearance of a prominent politician!' That weighed with me. A thousand
inconceivably petty worldlinesses weighed with me in that crisis."
Then he turned on me with a sorrowful smile, and, speaking slowly, "Here I
am!" he said.
"Here I am!" he repeated, "and my chance has gone from me. Three times in
one year the door has been offered me--the door that goes into peace, into
delight, into a beauty beyond dreaming, a kindness no man on earth can
know. And I have rejected it, Redmond, and it has gone----"
"How do you know?"
"I know. I know. I am left now to work it out, to stick to the tasks that
held me so strongly when my moments came. You say I have success--this
vulgar, tawdry, irksome, envied thing.
Pages:
772
773
774
775
776
777
778
779
780
781
782
783
784
785
786
787
788
789
790
791
792
793
794
795
796