for hours without speaking or moving, and it was terrible, terrible. He got worse about it. He would sit for hours in a chair, just biting his nails. And then, in the midst of it, he would suddenly ask me about Stanford White. It seemed to be something that was ever present.'
"This, gentlemen, was the condition of Harry Thaw when, in 1903, he parted from Evelyn Nesbit and sent her back ahead of him to New York. You have the first faint dawn of that mental condition which manifested itself three years after. The tower in which reason held its seat did not topple over, but its foundations were already beginning to be undermined.
"The storm had not burst forth, but the dark clouds were gathering from the four quarters of the horizon, from which lightning and thunder were three years afterwards to burst forth.
"She says that he called upon her as soon as he arrived in New York—the middle of November. She had got to this city in the latter part of October. In the meantime such things had happened here that when the man whom she loved and whose hand she had refused called upon her she declined to see him alone, and she says: 'I saw him at the Navarre. I would not see him alone. He came into the room and sat beside me and said: "What is the matter with you?" and I said: "I don't care to speak to you because I have heard certain things about you." He said he did not understand, and wanted me to tell him.
"'I told him that I had heard terrible stories. He said, "Poor Evelyn! They have deceived you!" I told him that Mr. White had taken me to Abraham Hummel's office and that they had showed me papers which they said were filed in a suit by a young woman against him. He said, "Poor little girl! You can believe them if you wish." The interview lasted ten minutes. I persisted I did not
