I now lived in a world where I belonged. I should never climb out again.
The intensity of emotion at the time is difficult to realize now, and quite impossible to recapture. I only know that my feelings burned like fire, all the fiercer, of course, for being inarticulate. The exaggeration was natural enough; everything was out of proportion in me: Boyde had destroyed my faith in people. I believed in no one. The doctor had said that to lose belief in others made life insupportable. I found that statement true. There was a deep bitterness in my heart that for a time was more than I could manage, and this distrust and bitterness led me into an act of cruelty that shames me to this day.
Into the roar and thunder of that frenzied newspaper office stole a hesitating figure one afternoon, a shy youth with rosy cheeks and curly hair, dressed in shabby but well-cut clothes, and obviously an Englishman. He wore gloves and carried a "cane"; these marked him as a "Britisher" at once. He was asking for someone; fingers were pointed at me; he was faintly familiar; I had seen the face before--but where? He came over and introduced himself as Calder, son of a Midland coach-*builder; we had met at some place or other--outside a studio door, I think--and he knew Kay. I forget what he was doing in New York---idling, I think, or travelling. He had outlived his cash, at any rate. He was in difficulties. I distrusted him instantly. He was, of course, another Boyde. I gave him the curtest possible greeting. He, in turn, found the greatest possible difficulty in telling me his story.
I was sitting at the reporters' table in shirt-sleeves (owing to the suffocating temperature of the over-heated office), scribbling at top speed the details of some lurid "story," while Calder told me his tale. He wanted to whisper, but the noise forced him to shout, and this disconcerted him. No one listened, however; he had merely brought a "story" in. He had--but it was his own story. I have quite forgotten what it was, or what had happened
to him; only the main point I remember: he had nowhere
