riends, I found myself actually flying abroad next morning to
escape from you, giving my family some absurd reason for my sudden
departure, and leaving a false address with my servant for fear you
might follow me by the next train....

Our friendship had always been a source of distress to my wife: not
merely because she had never liked you personally, but because she saw
how your continual companionship altered me, and not for the better.

You started without delay for Paris, sending me passionate telegrams on
the road to beg me to see you once, at any rate. I declined. You arrived
in Paris late on a Saturday night and found a brief letter from me
waiting for you at your hotel stating that I would not see you. Next
morning I received in Tite Street a telegram of some ten or eleven pages
in length from you. You stated in it that no matter what you had done to
me you could not believe that I would absolutely decline to see you; you
reminded me that for the sake of seeing me even for one hour you had
travelled six days and six nights across Europe without stopping once on
the way; you made what I must admit was a most pathetic appeal, and
ended with what seemed to me a threat of suicide and one not thinly
veiled. You had yourself often told me how many of your race there had
been who had stained their hands in their own blood: your uncle
certainly, your grandfather possibly; many others in the mad bad line
from which you come. Pity, my old affection for you, regard for your
mother, to whom your death under such dreadful circumstances would have
been a blow almost too great for her to bear, the horror of the idea
that so young a life, and one that amidst all its ugly faults had still
promise of beauty in it, should come to so revolting an end, mere
humanity itself--all these, if excuses be necessary, must serve as an
excuse for consenting to accord you one last interview. When I arrived
in Paris, your tears breaking out again and again all through the
evening, and falling over your cheeks like rain as we sat at dinner
first at Voisin's, at supper at Paillard's afterwards, the unfeigned joy
you evinced at seeing me, holding my hand whenever you could, as though
you were a gentle and penitent child; your contrition, so simple and
sincere at the moment made me consent to renew our friendship. Two days
after we had returned to London, your father saw you having luncheon
with me at the Cafe Royal, joined my table, drank of my w