He could cut himself off from life. It was plain and straightforward.
But Beatrice, his young children, without him! He was bound by an agreement which there was no discrediting to provide for them. Very well, he must provide for them. And then what? Humiliation at home, Helena forsaken, musical comedy night after night. That was insufferable—impossible! Like a man tangled up in a rope, he was not strong enough to free himself. He could not break with Helena and return to a degrading life at home; he could not leave his children and go to Helena.
Very well, it was impossible! Then there remained only one door which he could open in this prison corridor of life. Siegmund looked round the room. He could get his razor, or he could hang himself. He had thought of the two ways before. Yet now he was unprovided. His portmanteau stood at the foot of the bed, its straps flung loose. A portmanteau strap would do. Then it should be a portmanteau strap!
“Very well!” said Siegmund, “it is finally settled. I had better write to Helena, and tell her, and say to her she must go on. I’d better tell her.”
He sat for a long time with his notebook and a pencil, but he wrote nothing. At last he gave up.
“Perhaps it is just as well,” he said to himself. “She said she would come with me—perhaps that is just as well. She will go to the sea. When she knows, the sea will take her. She must know.
He took a card, bearing her name and her Cornwall address, from his pocket-book, and laid it on the dressing-table.
