He shuddered
at the recollection of the things he had hammered out so
gleefully on his typewriter down at the _Chronicle_ office. He
found himself recoiling in disgust from the man he had been, the
man who could have done a wanton thing like that without
compunction or ruth. He had read extracts from the article to an
appreciative colleague. . . .
A great sympathy for Ann welled up in him. No wonder she hated
the memory of Jimmy Crocker.
It is probable that remorse would have tortured him even further,
had he not chanced to turn absently to page forty-six and read a
poem entitled "Love's Funeral." It was not a long poem, and he
had finished it inside of two minutes; but by that time a change
had come upon his mood of self-loathing. He no longer felt like a
particularly mean murderer. "Love's Funeral" was like a tonic.
It braced and invigourated him. It was so unspeakably absurd, so
poor in every respect. All things, he now perceived, had worked
together for good. Ann had admitted on the boat that it was his
satire that had crushed out of her the fondness for this sort of
thing. If that was so, then the part he had played in her life
had been that of a rescuer. He thought of her as she was now and
as she must have been then to have written stuff like this, and
he rejoiced at what he had done. In a manner of speaking the Ann
of to-day, the glorious creature who went about the place
kidnapping Ogdens, was his handiwork.
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