Aikens has not come."
"There's nothing to tell. If it was God or the Devil that led me on to
this thing I don't know. I sold myself to it, soul and body. The idea of
this invention was not new, but my application was. So it got possession
of me. Whatever I made by the law went into it. I tried experiments in a
costly way then, had laboratories there, and workshops in the city. My
father left me a fortune; _that_ was swallowed up. I worked on with hard
struggle then. I was forty years old. I thought success lay just within
my reach. God! You don't know how I had fought for it, day by day, all
that long life! I was near mad, I think. And then"--
He stopped again, biting his under lip, standing motionless. The Doctor
waited until he was controlled.
"Never mind," gently. "Don't go on."
"Yes, I'll tell you all. I was married. A little Quaker girl she was,
uneducated, but the gentlest, truest woman God ever made, I think. It
rested one to look at her. There were two children. They died. Maybe, if
they had lived, it would have been different with me,--I'm so fond of
children. I was of her,--God knows I was! But after the children were
gone, and the property sunk, and the experiments all topped just short
of success, for want of means, I grew irritable and cross,--used to her.
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