“I do not know. I shan’t grow old. I shall go away before that.”
“You will go away? Where, how? It is too ridiculous! You are talking at random! Tell me. . . .”
“I will. Listen. I have attacks of virtue, I know not why,—moments, when suddenly everything overpowers me, my youth, my life of to-day, my life of to-morrow, and I feel only an infinite pity for myself, and nothing else. And sometimes I think that some day I must, at such a moment, leave this house, must fly like an arrow through the muddy street and down to the water. . . . That’s the stronghold from which I look at my life, and at the future. . . . But the terror that freezes every nerve during such consolation! . . . The river is terrible, and greenish, and cold, ugh . . .” and a chill shook her body, her white hand fell upon the table, and the slender fingers tapped it nervously.
My hero, a man fond of complete effects
