He said: 'I wouldn't admit to
anyone else that I'd told you.' I never admired Darcy more than I did
that night. His tone was so finely casual.

In something like a month I had got used to the idea of being condemned
to death. At any rate, it ceased to interfere with my sleep. I purchased
a vault for myself in Brompton Cemetery. Then I took this flat that I'm
talking in now, and began deliberately to think over how I should
finish my life. I'd got money--much more than old Ravengar imagined--and
I'm a bit of a philosopher, you know; I have my theories as to what
constitutes real living. However, I won't bother you with those. I
expect they're pretty crude, after all. Besides, my preparations were
all knocked on the head. I saw Camilla Payne again in Hugo's. She had
stopped typewriting, and was a milliner there. I tried my level best to
strike up an intimacy with her, but I failed. She wouldn't have it. The
fact is, I was too rich and showy. And I had a reputation behind me
which, possibly--well, you're aware of all that, Polycarp. In about a
fortnight I worshipped her--yes, I did actually worship her. I would
have done anything she ordered me, except leave her alone; and that I
wouldn't do. I dare say I might have got into a sort of friendship with
her if she'd had any home, any relatives, any place to receive me in.
But what can a girl do with nothing but a bed-sitting-room? I asked her
to go up the river; I asked her to dinner and to lunch, and to bring her
friends with her; I even asked her to go with me to an A.B.C. shop, but
she wouldn't. She was quite right, in a general way. How could she
guess I wasn't like the rest, or like what I had been?

Once, when she let me walk with her from Hugo's down to Walham Green, I
nearly went mad with joy. I think I verily was mad for a time. I used to
take out licenses for our marriage, and I used to buy clothes for
her--heaps of clothes, in case. Yes, I was as good as mad then. And when
she made it clear that this walking by my side was nothing at all, meant
nothing, and must be construed as nothing, I grew still more mad.

At last I wrote to her that if she didn't call and see me at my flat, I
should blow my brains out. I didn't expect her to call, and I did expect
that I should blow my brains out. I was ready to do so. A year more or a
year less on this earth--what did it matter to me?

Some people may think--_you_ may think, Polycarp--that a man like me,
under sentence of