FullReads

And suddenly this hatred had flamed like hell-fire, amazing even himself–that day when, lifted out of his indifference for an instant by a young girl’s gaiety–and with a smile, half-responsive, on his own unaccustomed lips, he had learned from her in the same instant, that the man he had almost ceased to remember was honestly in love with her.

And suddenly he knew that he hated and that he should strike, and that there could be no comparison in perfection between hatred and what perhaps was love.

Sometimes, at night, lying on the studio couch, he found himself still hesitating. Could Graylock be reached after death? Was it possible? If he broke his word after Graylock was dead could he still strike and reach him through the woman for whose sake he, Graylock, was going to step out of things?

That occupied his mind continually, now. Was there anybody who could tell him about such matters? Did clergymen really know whether the soul survived? And if it did, and if truly there were a hell, could a living man add anything to its torments for his enemy’s benefit?

One day the janitor, lingering, ventured to ask Drene whether he was feeling quite well.

“Yes” said Drene, “I am well.”

The janitor spoke of his not eating. And, as Drene said nothing, he mentioned the fact that Drene had not set foot outside his own quarters in many weeks.

Drene nodded: “I expect to go for a walk this evening.”

But he did not. He lay on his couch, eyes open in the darkness, wondering what Graylock was doing, how he lived, what occupied his days.

What were the nights of a condemned man like? Did Graylock sleep? Did he suffer? Was the suspense a living death to him? Had he ever suspected him, Drene, of treachery after he, Graylock, had fulfilled his final part of the bargain.

For a long time, now, a fierce curiosity concerning what Graylock was thinking and doing had possessed Drene. What does a man, who is in good physical health, do, when he is at liberty to compute to the very second how many seconds of life remain for him?

Drene’s sick brain ached with the problem day and night.

In November the snow fell. Drene had not been out except in imagination.

Day after day, in imagination, he had followed Graylock, night after night, slyly, stealthily, shirking after him through busy avenues at midday, lurking by shadowy houses at midnight, burning to see what expression this man wore, what was imprinted on his features;–obsessed by a desire to learn what he might be thinking–with death drawing nearer.

But Drene, in the body, had never stirred from his own chilly room–a gaunt, fierce-eyed thing, unkempt, half-clothed, huddled all day in his chair brooding above his bitten nails, or flung starkly across his couch at night staring at the stars through the dirty crust of glass above.

One night in December when the stars were all staring steadily back at him, and his thoughts were out somewhere in the darkness following his enemy, he heard somebody laughing in the room.

For a while he lay very still, listening; but when he realized that the laughter was his own he sat up, pressing his temples between hot and trembling fingers.

It seemed to silence the laughter: terror subsided to a tremulous apprehension–as though he had been on the verge of something horrible sinking into it for a moment–but had escaped.

Again he found himself thinking of Graylock, and presently he laughed; then frightened, checked himself. But his fevered brain had been afire too long; he lay fighting with his thoughts to hold them in leash lest they slip out into the night like blood hounds on the trail of the man they had dogged so long.

Trembling, terrified, he set his teeth in his bleeding lip, and clenched his gaunt fists: He could not hold his thoughts in leash; could not control the terrifying laughter; hatred blazed like hell-fire scorching the soul in him, searing his aching brain with flames which destroy.