He assumed that this calamity was due to your having learned about the
supposed shadow of bad luck, or at least about his habitual failure. And
while he did this injustice to you, Miss Kenby, he at the same time found
cause in himself for your apparent desertion. He felt he must be
worthless and undeserving. As the pain of losing you, and the hope that
went with you, was the keenest pain, the most staggering humiliation, he
had ever apparently owed to his unsuccess, his evil spirit of fancied
ill-luck, and his personality itself, he now saw these in darker colors
than ever before; he contemplated them more exclusively, he brooded on
them. And so he got into the state I just now described.
"He was dejected, embittered, wearied; sick of his way of livelihood,
sick of the atmosphere he moved in, sick of his reflections, sick of
himself. Life had got to be stale, flat, and unprofitable. His
self-loathing, which steadily grew, would have become a maddening torture
if he hadn't found refuge in a stony apathy. Sometimes he relieved this
by an outburst of bitter or satirical self-exposure, when the mood found
anybody at hand for his confidences. But for the most part he lived in a
lethargic indifference, mechanically going through the form of earning
his living.
"You may wonder why he took the trouble even to go through that form. It
may have been partly because he lacked the instinct--or perhaps the
initiative--for active suicide, and was too proud to starve at the
expense or encumbrance of other people.
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