I wrapped myself
well up, and went out. I found a fit subject. I replenished my life as
theretofore; my youthful, fresh appearance returned, and my confidence
with it. I refused to look again upon my own, my worn face, from that
time until tonight.
"But alarm again seized me about a year ago, when I chanced by
calculation to note that my periods of abounding life were gradually
getting shorter,--that I needed reinvigoration at more frequent
intervals;--not that I did not take as much from my subjects as
formerly--on the contrary, I seemed to take more--but that I lost more
rapidly what I took, as if my body were becoming little better than a
fine sieve. The last stage of all was this that you are familiar with,
when my subjects began to be so utterly exhausted as to attract public
notice. Yet that is not what has given me pause, and made me resolve to
bring the whole weary, selfish business to an end. Could I not have gone
elsewhere--anywhere, the wide world over--and lived my life? But I was
kept, I was tethered here, to this London by a feeling I had never known
before.
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