I write this in the beginning of a minor tragedy; if indeed the
severance of any long, helpful and sympathetic association can ever be
so lightly named. For that is precisely what our intercourse has been
these many weeks past; one of nervous and quickly roused irritation on
my part, of swift and gentle ministration on his.
At least once a day we have met during that period (and occasionally,
though rarely, more often), usually in those before-breakfast hours when
the temper of normal man is most exacting and uncertain. But his temper
never varied; the perfection of it was indeed among his finest
qualities. Morning after morning, throughout a time that, as it chanced,
has been full of distress and disappointment, would his soothing and
infinitely gentle touch recall me to content. That stroking caress of
his was a thing indescribable; one before which the black shadows left
by the hours of night seemed literally to dissolve and vanish.
And now the long expected, long dreaded has begun to happen. He, too, is
turning against me, as so many others of his fellows have done in the
past. Who knows the reason? What continued roughness on my part has at
last worn out even him? But for some days now there has been no
misreading the fatal symptoms--increasing irritability on the one side,
harshness turning to blunt indifference on the other. And this morning
came the unforgivable offence, the cut direct.
That settles it; to-morrow, with a still smarting regret, I unwrap a new
razor-blade.
* * * * *