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‘I’m not going back to Paris. I’m going to die.’
The very naturalness with which he said this startled
Philip. He thought of half a dozen things to say, but they
seemed futile. He knew that Cronshaw was a dying man.
‘Are you going to settle in London then?’ he asked lame-
ly.
‘What is London to me? I am a fish out of water. I walk
through the crowded streets, men jostle me, and I seem to
walk in a dead city. I felt that I couldn’t die in Paris. I want-
ed to die among my own people. I don’t know what hidden
instinct drew me back at the last.’
Philip knew of the woman Cronshaw had lived with and
the two draggle-tailed children, but Cronshaw had nev-
er mentioned them to him, and he did not like to speak of
them. He wondered what had happened to them.
‘I don’t know why you talk of dying,’ he said.
‘I had pneumonia a couple of winters ago, and they told
me then it was a miracle that I came through. It appears I’m
extremely liable to it, and another bout will kill me.’
‘Oh, what nonsense! You’re not so bad as all that. You’ve
only got to take precautions. Why don’t you give up drink-
ing?’
‘Because I don’t choose. It doesn’t matter what a man
does if he’s ready to take the consequences. Well, I’m ready
to take the consequences. You talk glibly of giving up drink-
ing, but it’s the only thing I’ve got left now. What do you
think life would be to me without it? Can you understand
the happiness I get out of my absinthe? I yearn for it; and
when I drink it I savour every drop, and afterwards I feel my