"The slander has died out?" I said.

"The slander is as active as ever. But when it follows me here, it will

come too late."

"You will have left the place?"

"No, Mr. Blake--I shall be dead. For ten years past I have suffered from

an incurable internal complaint. I don't disguise from you that I should

have let the agony of it kill me long since, but for one last interest

in life, which makes my existence of some importance to me still. I want

to provide for a person--very dear to me--whom I shall never see again.

My own little patrimony is hardly sufficient to make her independent of

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the world. The hope, if I could only live long enough, of increasing

it to a certain sum, has impelled me to resist the disease by such

palliative means as I could devise. The one effectual palliative in my

case, is--opium. To that all-potent and all-merciful drug I am indebted

for a respite of many years from my sentence of death. But even the

virtues of opium have their limit. The progress of the disease has

gradually forced me from the use of opium to the abuse of it. I am

feeling the penalty at last. My nervous system is shattered; my nights

are nights of horror. The end is not far off now. Let it come--I have

not lived and worked in vain. The little sum is nearly made up; and I

have the means of completing it, if my last reserves of life fail me

sooner than I expect. I hardly know how I have wandered into telling you

this. I don't think I am mean enough to appeal to your pity. Perhaps, I

fancy you may be all the readier to believe me, if you know that what I

have said to you, I have said with the certain knowledge in me that I am

a dying man. There is no disguising, Mr. Blake, that you interest me.

I have attempted to make my poor friend's loss of memory the means of

bettering my acquaintance with you. I have speculated on the chance of

your feeling a passing curiosity about what he wanted to say, and of my

being able to satisfy it. Is there no excuse for my intruding myself on

you? Perhaps there is some excuse. A man who has lived as I have lived

has his bitter moments when he ponders over human destiny. You have

youth, health, riches, a place in the world, a prospect before you. You,

and such as you, show me the sunny side of human life, and reconcile me

with the world that I am leaving, before I go. However this talk between

us may end, I shall not forget that you have done me a kindness in doing

that. It rests with you, sir, to say what you proposed saying, or to

wish me good morning."




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