But
ten or twelve years' solitary confinement, although it mayn't sound
much on paper, is enough to crush all the life and energy out of a
man."
Aynesworth shook his head.
"You haven't seen him," he said. "I have!"
"What's he like, Walter?" another man asked.
"I can't describe him," Aynesworth answered. "I shouldn't like to try.
I'll bring him here some day. You fellows shall see him for
yourselves. I find him interesting enough."
"The whole thing," the editor declared, "will fizzle out. You see if
it doesn't? A man who's just spent ten or twelve years in prison isn't
likely to run any risk of going there again. There will be no tragedy;
more likely reconciliation."
"Perhaps," Aynesworth said imperturbably. "But it wasn't only the
possibility of anything of that sort happening, you know, which
attracted me. It was the tragedy of the man himself, with his numbed,
helpless life, set down here in the midst of us, with a great, blank
chasm between him and his past. What is there left to drive the
wheels? The events of one day are simple and monotonous enough to us,
because they lean up against the events of yesterday, and the
yesterdays before! How do they seem, I wonder, to a man whose
yesterday was more than a decade of years ago!"
The editor nodded.
"It must be a grim sensation," he admitted, "but I am afraid with you,
my dear Walter, it is an affair of shop. You wish to cull from your
interesting employer the material for that every-becoming novel of
yours.
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