Suddenly his bowed shoulders began
to heave, and I heard him laugh in dreadful manner and when he turned
his look was demoniac.
"Egad, but you will have your joke, eh, Perry, and devilish
funny--aye, devilish! My wife, says you--ha! ha! says I. You're drunk,
says you--I am, says I--so I can laugh, d'ye see--"
"Anthony!" I cried, rising from my chair. "O Anthony, here's more than
drink--dear fellow, in God's name, what is it?" And I grasped at him
with weak but insistent hands.
For a moment he made as if to throw me off, then his long arm was
about me, his head bowed upon my shoulder, and when he spoke his voice
had lost its wild, mad ring.
"D'ye think I like getting drunk, Perry? But there are worse
things--madness and murder. A bullet would be quick, but I still have
hope--sometimes--and death by drink is a slow business, so I've chosen
death by drink--"
"Why, Tony? What is the trouble? Is it--Barbara--your Loveliness?"
"She has never been the same since she came back from abroad, Perry.
Some secret trouble--all these weeks it has been getting worse--she
has sometimes seemed afraid of me--of me, Perry! At last I taxed her
with it--begged she'd confide in me. She told me there was nothing,
laughed it off and I believed it, like a fool--but that night,
Perry--that night, as she slept--and looking pure and holy as one of
God's angels, she--cried on a name--a man's name. I woke
her--questioned her, begged, implored, commanded--and still she
laughed, but always with the fear in her eyes.
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