"I
don't know about you, Sylvia, but I guess it would have made some
difference in my life!"
Sylvia drew back, horrified that he was even in thought, even for a
moment robbing her of her mother. "Oh, what I would have been--I can't
bear to _think_ of what kind of woman I would have been without my
mother!" The idea was terrible to her. She shrank away from her
aunt as never before in her life. The reminiscence brought an idea,
evidently as deeply moving, into Arnold's mind. The words burst from
him, "I might now be married to Judith!" He put his hands over his
eyes and cast himself down among the pine-needles.
Sylvia spoke quickly lest she lose courage. "Arnold! Arnold! What are
you going to do with yourself now? I'm so horribly anxious about you.
I haven't dared speak before--"
He turned over and lay on his back, staring up into the dark green of
the pine. "I'm going to drink myself to death as soon as I can," he
said very quietly. "The doctors say it won't take long."
She looked at his wasted face and gave a shocked, pitying exclamation,
thinking that it would be illness and not drink which was to come to
his rescue soon.
He looked at her askance, with his bloodshot eyes. "Can you give me
any single reason why I shouldn't?" he challenged her.
Sylvia, the modern, had no answer. She murmured weakly, "Why must any
of us try to be decent?"
"That's for the rest of you," he said.
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