There is no heroism in me; it was simply that I needed him, rotten as he was, heartless, cruel, vile as well; I funked another spell of that awful loneliness; I knew him now for a coward and a beast, but I could not face another night alone. That complete loneliness had been too horrible. A wild animal was better than that. Boyde was of the hyena type, but a hyena was better than a spider. It was neither generosity nor nobility that made me listen to his ridiculous and lying story of an “awful and terrible temptation,” of a “fearful experience with a woman” who had drugged him.... The tale spun itself far into the night, the razor and the confession were under my pillow, I fell asleep, dead with exhaustion, while he was still explaining something about a “woman named Pauline M----” who had “deceived me in a most extraordinary way....” The following day, in the morning--Dr. Huebner came unexpectedly. Boyde had gone out before I woke. This time he was a radiant Dr. Jekyll, and I told him the whole story. His only comment, looking severely at me through the big spectacles, was: “I expected it. He is a confidence man. I knew it the first time I saw him. You have kicked the devil out, of course?” A violent disagreement that was almost a quarrel followed. “I simply do not understand you,” he said at last, in complete disgust. It was only the wondrous, beaming happy mood he was in that prevented his being really angry. He threw his hands up and snorted. “You are either a fool or a saint, and--I’m sure you’re not a saint.” He was very much upset. I did not yield. There was something in me that persuaded me to forgive Boyde and to give him yet another chance. I told Boyde this in very plain language. I claim no credit--I have never felt the smallest credit--for what I did. It was simply that somehow it seemed impossible _not_ to forgive him--anything. But the time was near, though the feeling of forgiveness still held true in me, when my forgiveness took another form. Thirty years ago these little incidents occurred. It seems like thirty days. CHAPTER XIX It is a mercy one cannot see the future. In that New York misery, present and to follow, had I known that some fifteen years later I should be my own master, living more or less “like a gentleman,” earning my livelihood, though a very bare one, by writing, I could never have faced what I did face. Any value that may have lain in the experiences would certainly have been missed, at any rate. If one knew that the future promised better things, there is no patience in human beings that could hold and wait for it; if, on the other hand, it promised worse, I have met no courage that could bear the present. Those who preach “live in the present only” have common sense on their side.