He also knew that, sooner or later, his left hand would be amputated and
that his career would come to an inglorious end--indeed, the end had
already come. The ordeal painfully shadowed upon his horizon was only
the final seal. Fortunately there was money enough for everything--he
would want pitifully little for the rest of his life.
His life stretched out before him in a waste of empty years. He was
thirty, now, and his father had lived until well past seventy; might
have lived many years more had he not died when his heart broke over the
misfortunes of his idolised son. He could remember the rumble of the
carriage wheels the night of the funeral. The nurse had dozed in her
chair just as she was dozing now, while downstairs they carried his
father out of the house in a black casket and buried him. It was all as
clear as though it had happened yesterday, instead of ages ago.
A clock, somewhere near by, chimed three quick, silvery strokes. With
the last stroke, the clock in the kitchen struck three, also, in a
different tone and with an annoying briskness of manner.
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