"What about us, Bartley?" she asked in a thin voice.
He locked and unlocked his hands over the grate and spread his fingers close to the bluish flame, while the coals crackled and the clock ticked and a street vendor began to call under the window. At last Alexander brought out one word:-"Everything!"
Hilda was pale by this time, and her eyes were wide with fright. She looked about desperately from Bartley to the door, then to the windows, and back again to Bartley. She rose uncertainly, touched his hair with her hand, then sank back upon her stool.
"I'll do anything you wish me to, Bartley," she said tremulously. "I can't stand seeing you miserable."
"I can't live with myself any longer," he answered roughly.
He rose and pushed the chair behind him and began to walk miserably about the room, seeming to find it too small for him. He pulled up a window as if the air were heavy.
Hilda watched him from her corner, trembling and scarcely breathing, dark shadows growing about her eyes.
"It . . . it hasn't always made you miserable, has it?" Her eyelids fell and her lips quivered.
"Always. But it's worse now. It's unbearable. It tortures me every minute."
"But why NOW?" she asked piteously, wringing her hands.
He ignored her question. "I am not a man who can live two lives," he went on feverishly. "Each life spoils the other. I get nothing but misery out of either. The world is all there, just as it used to be, but I can't get at it any more. There is this deception between me and everything."
At that word "deception," spoken with such self-contempt, the color flashed back into Hilda's face as suddenly as if she had been struck by a whiplash. She bit her lip and looked down at her hands, which were clasped tightly in front of her.
"Could you--could you sit down and talk about it quietly, Bartley, as if I were a friend, and not some one who had to be defied?"
He dropped back heavily into his chair by the fire. "It was myself I was defying, Hilda. I have thought about it until I am worn out."
He looked at her and his haggard face softened. He put out his hand toward her as he looked away again into the fire.
She crept across to him, drawing her stool after her. "When did you first begin to feel like this, Bartley?"