"It's no use working yourself up into a fever."
"I am not working myself up; unfortunately that has been done for
me," I answered, with a short laugh. "Well, Dick, I am sick of
everything, disgusted with everything! It's the same old story
perpetually repeated. All that one fixes one's eyes on in the
distance turns into dust as one approaches it. For the last year I
have thought of this meeting this evening, and now it has come, what
is it?"
"You are taking me by surprise to-night, Victor! I remember you in
the regiment as so deuced calm."
"I'm never calm!" I returned. "Exteriorly, yes, of course, for one's
own convenience and self-respect, to outsiders, one is always calm;
but the exterior is not the reality. I am not one of those things
naturally which I command myself into being: existence to me is
nothing but a close-fitting, strangling, self-restraint. It drags
upon me like a prisoner's gangrening fetter, and I'm getting tired
of it. I think I'll slip it off altogether!"
I talked straight out of the distraction of my own thoughts, the
pain in my head was acute, stunning my brain, and my vision seemed
all wrong, as when one has been drinking. I was conscious of Dick
looking at me anxiously, as he said--
"That's all nonsense! You are quite out of your senses this evening!
You wouldn't throw up your life now, when you are just on the point
of success, surely?"
"If I can't force our marriage, it's likely to come to that, I
think," I muttered.
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