‘Any hour,’ I said, ’may bring you the reply from Mrs. Keeting.  Of course it will be favourable, and the good news—­’

’Too late, I have killed her!  That woman won’t write.  She’s one of the vulgar rich, and we offended her pride; and such as she never forgive.’

He sat down for a moment, but started up again in an agony of mental suffering.

‘She is dying—­and there, there, that’s what has killed her!’ He gesticulated wildly towards the books.  ’I have sold her life for those.  Oh!—­oh!’

With this cry he seized half a dozen volumes, and, before I could understand what he was about, he had flung up the window-sash, and cast the books into the street.  Another batch followed; I heard the thud upon the pavement.  Then I caught him by the arm, held him fast, begged him to control himself.

‘They shall all go!’ he cried.  ’I loathe the sight of them.  They have killed my dear wife!’

He said it sobbing, and at the last words tears streamed from his eyes.  I had no difficulty now in restraining him.  He met my look with a gaze of infinite pathos, and talked on while he wept.

’If you knew what she has been to me!  When she married me I was a ruined man twenty years older.  I have given her nothing but toil and care.  You shall know everything—­for years and years I have lived on the earnings of her labour.  Worse than that, I have starved and stinted her to buy books.  Oh, the shame of it!  The wickedness of it!  It was my vice—­the vice that enslaved me just as if it had been drinking or gambling.  I couldn’t resist the temptation—­though every day I cried shame upon myself and swore to overcome it.  She never blamed me; never a word—­nay, not a look—­of a reproach.  I lived in idleness.  I never tried to save her that daily toil at the shop.  Do you know that she worked in a shop?—­She, with her knowledge and her refinement leading such a life as that!  Think that I have passed the shop a thousand times, coming home with a book in my hands!  I had the heart to pass, and to think of her there!  Oh!  Oh!’

Some one was knocking at the door.  I went to open, and saw the landlady, her face set in astonishment, and her arms full of books.

‘It’s all right,’ I whispered.  ’Put them down on the floor there; don’t bring them in.  An accident.’

Christopherson stood behind me; his look asked what he durst not speak.  I said it was nothing, and by degrees brought him into a calmer state.  Luckily, the doctor came before I went away, and he was able to report a slight improvement.  The patient had slept a little and seemed likely to sleep again.  Christopherson asked me to come again before long—­there was no one else, he said, who cared anything about him—­and I promised to call the next day.

I did so, early in the afternoon.  Christopherson must have watched for my coming:  before I could raise the knocker the door flew open, and his face gleamed such a greeting as astonished me.  He grasped my hand in both his.