"These are the facts in the case," he continued. "The one man I love and
unequivocally respect is tied, hand and foot, to that unsexed
dehumanized morphine receptacle on the bed. She is hopeless. Every known
specific has failed, _must_ fail, for she loves the vice. He has one of
the best brains of this day prolific in brains; a distressing capacity
for affection, human to the core. At the age of forty-two, in the
maturity of his mental powers, he carries with him a constant sickening
sense of humiliation; a proud man, he lives in daily fear of exposure
and shame. At the age of forty-two, in the maturity of his manhood, he
meets the woman who conquers his heart, his imagination, who compels his
faith by making other women abhorrent to him, who allures and maddens
with the certainty of her power to make good his ideal of her. He cannot
marry her; that animal on the bed is capable of living for twenty years.
"So much for him. A girl of twenty-eight, whose wealth and brain and
beauty, and that other something that has not yet been analyzed and
labelled, have made her a social star; who has come to wonder, then to
resent, then to yawn at the general vanity of life, is suddenly swept
out of her calm orbit by a man's passion; and, with the swiftness of
decision natural to her, goes to Europe.
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