Sister Soulsby forced a smile to her lips.  “What nonsense you talk—­about dying!” she exclaimed.  “Why, man alive, you’ll sleep this all off like a top, if you’ll only lie down and give yourself a chance.  Come, now, you must do as you’re told.”

With a resolute hand, she made him lie down again, and once more covered him with the fur.  He submitted, and did not even offer to put out his arm this time, but looked in piteous dumbness at her for a long time.  While she sat thus in silence, the sound of Brother Soulsby moving about upstairs became audible.

Theron heard it, and the importance of hurrying on some further disclosure seemed to suggest itself.  “I can see you think I’m just drunk,” he said, in low, sombre tones.  “Of course that’s what he thought.  The hackman thought so, and so did the conductor, and everybody.  But I hoped you would know better.  I was sure you would see that it was something worse than that.  See here, I’ll tell you.  Then you’ll understand.  I’ve been drinking for two days and one whole night, on my feet all the while, wandering alone in that big strange New York, going through places where they murdered men for ten cents, mixing myself up with the worst people in low bar-rooms and dance-houses, and they saw I had money in my pocket, too, and yet nobody touched me, or offered to lay a finger on me.  Do you know why?  They understood that I wanted to get drunk, and couldn’t.  The Indians won’t harm an idiot, or lunatic, you know.  Well, it was the same with these vilest of the vile.  They saw that I was a fool whom God had taken hold of, to break his heart first, and then to craze his brain, and then to fling him on a dunghill to die like a dog.  They believe in God, those people.  They’re the only ones who do, it seems to me.  And they wouldn’t interfere when they saw what He was doing to me.  But I tell you I wasn’t drunk.  I haven’t been drunk.  I’m only heart-broken, and crushed out of shape and life—­that’s all.  And I’ve crawled here just to have a friend by me when—­when I come to the end.”

“You’re not talking very sensibly, or very bravely either, Theron Ware,” remarked his companion.  “It’s cowardly to give way to notions like that.”

“Oh, I ’m not afraid to die; don’t think that,” he remonstrated wearily.  “If there is a Judgment, it has hit me as hard as it can already.  There can’t be any hell worse than that I’ve gone through.  Here I am talking about hell,” he continued, with a pained contraction of the muscles about his mouth—­a stillborn, malformed smile—­“as if I believed in one!  I’ve got way through all my beliefs, you know.  I tell you that frankly.”

“It’s none of my business,” she reassured him.  “I’m not your Bishop, or your confessor.  I’m just your friend, your pal, that’s all.”