Page:Yellow Claw 1920.djvu/255

 Helen Cumberly found herself forced to turn her head aside.

“I have been blind,” continued Leroux, in a forced, monotonous voice. “That Mira has not—deceived me, in the worst sense of the word, is in no way due to my care of her. I recognize that, and I accept my punishment; for I deserved it. But what now overwhelms me is the knowledge, the frightful knowledge, that in a sense I have misjudged her, that I have remained here inert, making no effort, thinking her absence voluntary, whilst—God help her!—she has been”…

“Once again, Leroux,” interrupted Dr. Cumberly, “I must ask you not to take too black a view. I blame myself more than I blame you, for having failed to perceive what as an intimate friend I had every opportunity to perceive; that your wife was acquiring the opium habit. You have told me that you count her as dead”—he stood beside Leroux, resting both hands upon the bowed shoulders—“I have not encouraged you to change that view. One who has cultivated—the—vice, to a point where protracted absences become necessary—you understand me?—is, so far as my experience goes”…

“Incurable! I quite understand,” jerked Leroux. “A thousand times better dead, indeed.”

“The facts as I see them,” resumed the physician, “as I see them, are these: by some fatality, at present inexplicable, a victim of the opium syndicate met