He dreaded his evenings, which he knew
not how to spend; dreaded the recurring Sunday, interminable in
duration, whose leaden hours seemed never to reach their end. His
only solace was in his work, which took him out of himself and
prevented him from thinking. He made a weekly pilgrimage past the
Quintans' house. The blinds were always drawn. It was as dead as
one of those Cuban mills, standing in the desolation of burned
fields. Once, greatly daring, and impelled by a sudden impulse, he
went to the door and requested the address of his vanished
friends:
"Grand Hotel, Vevey, Switzerland." He repeated the words to
himself as he went back to his boarding-house, repeated them again
and again like a child going on an errand, "Grand Hotel, Vevey,
Switzerland," in a sort of panic lest he might forget them. He
tossed that night in his bed in a torment of indecision. Ought he
to write? Ought he to take the risk of a reply, courteous and
cold, that he felt himself without the courage to endure? Or was
it not better to put an end to it altogether and accept like a man
the inevitable "no" of her decision.
He rose at dawn, and, lighting the gas, went back to bed with what
paper he could lay his hands on. He had no pen, no ink, only the
stub of a pencil he carried in his pocket. How it flew over the
ragged sheets under the fierce spell of his determination! All the
misery and longing of months went out in that letter. Inarticulate
no longer, he found the expression of a passionate and despairing
eloquence.
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