A last sneer from him--"I will go, but first give me back the
presents I have promised you!"
Then a slammed door and--silence.
What use, without her guidance, to try to keep straight any more?
Bereft of her love, Robert had sunk steadily. Gambling, drink,
morphia, billiards and cigars--he had taken to them all; until now
in the wretched figure of the outcast on the Embankment you would
never have recognized the once spruce figure of Handsome Hardrow.
[EDITOR. It all seems to have happened rather rapidly, does it not?
Twenty-four hours ago he had been--AUTHOR. You forget that this is
SHORT story.]
Handsome Hardow! How absurd it sounded now! He had let his beard
grow, his clothes were in rags, a scar over one eye testified--
[EDITOR. Yes, yes. Of course, I quite admit that a man might go to
the bad in twenty-four hours, but would his beard grow as--AUTHOR.
Look here, you've heard of a man going grey with trouble in a single
night, haven't you?
EDITOR. Certainly.
AUTHOR. Well, it's the same idea as that.
EDITOR. Ah, quite so, quite so.
AUTHOR. Where was I?
EDITOR. A scar over one eye was just testifying--I suppose he had
two eyes in the ordinary way?]
---testified to a drunken frolic of an hour or two ago. Never
before, thought the policeman, as he passed upon his beat, had such
a pitiful figure cowered upon the Embankment, and prayed for the
night to cover him.