Vandover and the Brute

spent the intervening moments in arranging the details of the matter. At first he thought he would do it standing, but he abandoned that idea, fearing to strike his head against the furniture as he fell. He was about to decide upon the huge leather chair, when the remembrance of his father's death made that impossible. He finally concluded to sit upon the edge of his bed, leaning a little backward so as not to fall upon the floor, and he dragged the bed out into the sitting-room, prefer

even then, nothing but outer darkness then and the gnashing of teeth, nothing but the deaf silence, nothing but the blind darkness, nothing but the unbroken blackness of an eternal night.

ut the two seemed to act independently of each other. The forms he made on the canvas were no adequate reflection of those in his brain;

imagination saw the picture clearer, his hand moved with more assurance, b

But, Van, won't you be better now? Won't you break from it all and be your own self again? I have faith in you. I believe it's in you to become a great man and a good man. It isn't too late to begin all over again. Just be your better self; live up to the best that's in you; if not for your own sake, then for the sake of that other girl that's coming into your life some time; that other girl who is good and sweet and pure, whom you will really, really love and who will really, really love you."

thought I did. It was wrong of me, I know, and I should have known my own mind before, but I didn't, I didn't. You talk about Dolly Haight; but it is not Dolly Haight at all who has changed my affection for you. I will be just as frank as I can with you, Van. I may learn really to love Dolly Haight; I don't know, I think perhaps I will, but it isn't that I care for him just because I don't care for you. Can't you see, it's just as if I had never met you.

an, don't you know how it is with girls? They really love the man who loves them the most. Half the time they're just in love with being loved. That's the way most girls love nowadays, and you know yourself, Van, that Dolly Haight really loves me more than you do.

, because I find I don't care for you as much as I thought I did. What has happened has only shown me that. I'm sorry, oh, so sorry to be disappointed in you, but it's because I only think of you as being once a very good friend of mine, not because I love you as you think I did. Once—a long time ago—when we first knew each other, then, perhaps—things were different then. But somehow we seem to have grown away from that. Since then we have both been mistaken; you thought I cared for you in that way, and I thought so, too, and I thought you cared for me; but it was only that we were keeping up appearances, pretending to ourselves just for the sake of old times. We don't love each other now; you know it. But I have never intentionally deceived you or tried to lead you on; when I told you I cared for you I really thought I did. I meant to be sincere; I always thought so until this happened, and then when I saw how easily I could let you go, it only proved to me that I did not care for you as I

, I hope you see just how it is, Van," she said at length. "What has happened hasn't made me cease to care for you, because if I had really cared for you the way I thought I did, the way a girl ought to care for the man she wants to marry, I would have stood by you through everything, no matter what you did. I don't do s

Some strange and dreadful change had taken place; things were different, people were different to him; not every one had been so outspoken as Turner, Henrietta Vance and her mother, but even amongst others who had talked to him politely and courteously enough, the change was no less apparent. It was in the air, a certain vague shrinking and turning of the shoulder, a general atmosphere of aversion and repulsion, an unseen frown, an unexpressed rebuff, intangible, illusive, but as unmistakable as his own existence. The world he had known knew him now no longer. It was ostracism at last.