really. He emanated
a kind of fear. Depression and even despair seemed to hang about him
like a cloak. He could not shake it off. And yet, literally, in his case
there was nothing to fear, if he had only known.

And yet two years before he did die, I knew he would. Fantastic as it
may seem, to be shut out from that bright world of which he deemed
himself an essential figure was all but unendurable. He had no ready
money now--not the same amount anyhow. He could not greet his old-time
friends so gayly, entertain so freely. Meeting him on Broadway shortly
after the failure and asking after his affairs, he talked of going into
business for himself as a publisher, but I realized that he could not.
He had neither the ability nor the talent for that, nor the heart. He
was not a business man but a song-writer and actor, had never been
anything but that. He tried in this new situation to write songs, but he
could not. They were too morbid. What he needed was some one to buoy him
up, a manager, a strong confidant of some kind, some one who would have
taken his affairs in hand and shown him what to do. As it was he had no
one. His friends, like winter-frightened birds, had already departed.
Personally, I was in no position to do anything at the time, being more
or less depressed myself and but slowly emerging from difficulties which
had held me for a number of years.

About a year or so after he failed my sister E---- announced that Paul
had been there and that he was coming to live with her. He could not pay
so much then, being involved with all sorts of examinations of one kind
and another, but neither did he have to. Her memory was not short; she
gave him the fullness of her home. A few months later he was ostensibly
connected with another publishing house, but by then he was feeling so
poorly physically and was finding consolation probably in some drinking
and the caresses of those feminine friends who have, alas, only caresses
to offer. A little later I met a doctor who said, "Paul cannot live. He
has pernicious anaemia. He is breaking down inside and doesn't know it.
He can't last long. He's too depressed." I knew it was so and what the
remedy was--money and success once more, the petty pettings and flattery
of that little world of which he had been a part but which now was no
more for him. Of all those who had been so lavish in their greetings and
companionship earlier in his life, scarcely one, so far as I could make
out