HIS SECRET SIN
He thrust it into the empty grate, lit the paper frills,
watched all blaze up.
Then, gulping down a sob, he went to
the drawer of a cabinet and pulled out the revolver which he
had bought
(and loaded, under the
shopman’s guidance)
against burglars.
Yes, he must kill himself.
He drew back the hammer.
Cold sweat beaded his flabby face.
He could not; and any-
how, how did one?
He thought of many stories of people
who had shot themselves ineffectively.
He felt for his heart
and
failed to find it, wondered if it had stopped and he
were dying, had
a fit of fear paralysing all his will.
He
thought of himself lying dead.
”No, by God! I can't do it!” he cried, and flung the
pistol back into the drawer.
As luck would have it, the
weapon exploded.
The bullet broke his jaw, tore away four
molars, smashed the cheek-bone, pulped the right eye, and,
glancing from the frontal bone, found its billet in the ceiling.
He lost
consciousness
and
fell.
His
head
struck
the
grate where yet smouldered the ashes of the photograph.
It was three months before he recovered, and then with
only half a face to face the world with.
He still thinks
that Gertrude gave him away, for the street-boys have taken
to calling him “old Venus."
But he is wrong; the boys
have their aesthetic reasons for the name.
Gertrude in any case is much too busy to bother her
head about him; for, after a year in the Latin Quarter, if she
has failed to surpass Degas and Manet and O‘Conor, she has
at least conquered the great pianist VVlodywewsky, and it
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