he said quietly: “It was good to have known you. I shall never forget you.”
“Nor I you, Frank,” the other said. “No matter what has happened—how we feel about each other now—you had a place in my life that no one else has ever had.”
“And what was that?” said Starwick.
“I think it was that you were young—my own age—and that you were my friend. Last night after—after that thing happened,” he went on, his own face flushing with the pain of memory, “I thought back over all the time since I have known you. And for the first time I realized that you were the first and only person of my own age that I could call my friend. You were my one true friend—the one I always turned to, believed in with unquestioning devotion. You were the only real friend that I ever had. Now something else has happened. You have taken from me something that I wanted, you have taken it without knowing that you took it, and it will always be like this. You were my brother and my friend—”
“And now?” said Starwick quietly.
“You are my mortal enemy. Good-bye.”
“Good-bye, Eugene,” said Starwick sadly. “But let me tell you this before I go. Whatever it was I took from you, it was something that I did not want or wish to take. And I would give it back again if I could.”
“Oh, fortunate and favoured Starwick,” the other jeered. “To be so rich—to have such gifts and not to know he has them—to be for ever victorious, and to be so meek and mild.”
“And I will tell you this as well,” Starwick continued. “Whatever anguish and suffering this mad hunger, this impossible desire, has caused you, however fortunate or favoured you may think I am, I would give my whole life if I could change places with you for an hour—know for an hour an atom of your anguish and your hunger and your hope…. Oh, to feel so, suffer so, and live so!—however mistaken you may be!… To have come lusty, young, and living into this world… not to have come, like me, still-born from your mother’s womb—never to know the dead heart and the passionless passion—the cold brain and the cold hopelessness of hope—to be wild, mad, furious, and tormented—but to have belief, to live in anguish, but to live—and not to die.”… He turned and opened the door. I would give all I have and all you think I have, for just one hour of it. You call me fortunate and happy. You are the most fortunate and happy man I ever knew. Good-bye, Eugene."
