Yes, I have fifty times had it on my mind to tell you the whole story.
But who can be certain that his best friend will not smile--or, what is
worse, cherish a kind of charitable pity ever afterwards--when the
external forms of a very serious kind of passion seem trivial,
fantastic, foolish? And the worst of all is that the heroic part which I
imagined I was playing proves to have been almost the reverse. The only
comfort which I can find in my humiliation is that I am capable of
feeling it. There isn't a bit of a paradox in this, as you will see; but
I only mention it, now, to prepare you for, maybe, a little morbid
sensitiveness of my moral nerves.
The documents are all in this portfolio, under my elbow. I had just read
them again completely through, when you were announced. You may examine
them as you like, afterwards: for the present, fill your glass, take
another Cabana, and keep silent until my "ghastly tale" has reached its
most lamentable conclusion.
The beginning of it was at Wampsocket Springs three years ago last
summer.
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