Page:Arthur Stringer--The House of Intrigue.djvu/75

Rh seemed to have stopped. I'd hitched my wagon to Bud, and they'd put his light out. I'd tried to help him, and instead of that I'd hurt him in the only way that was left for him to be hurt. He was dead—and I was the cause of it!

I was glad enough of my little white room of peace, during the next few weeks. I was easier to manage, after that. I still hated the confinement. I still revolted in spirit at the smallness of the world they had walled me up in. But I began to reach out for something stable, at a time when all my world seemed going like the wooden horses of a carousel. I even began to study, for I found that it made me forget. And, even more than before, there were changes taking place, although I didn't always seem conscious of them.

I often wondered if Bud knew what he was doing when he sent me to that place. I used to ask myself if he realized that he was educating me away from him, forever. For that was actually what happened. The old ways began to seem cheap, and the old grandeurs as pathetic as the cotton grape-vines they festoon road-house restaurants with. I no longer thought of the big things we might have done in that No-Man's Land of the urban outlaw, if Bud had only lived. I began to despise that sort of life.