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action, for the drug he had taken inclined him to a lethargic and
dignified melancholy. In certain respects he modified details. If he
left all his property to Elizabeth it would include the voluptuously
appointed room he occupied, and for many reasons he did not care to
leave that to her. On the other hand, it had to be left to some one. In
his clogged condition this worried him extremely.
In the end he decided to leave it to the sympathetic exponent of the
fashionable religious cult, whose conversation had been so pleasing in
the past. "He will understand," said Bindon with a sentimental sigh.
"
He knows what Evil means--he understands something of the Stupendous
Fascination of the Sphinx of Sin. Yes--he will understand." By that
phrase it was that Bindon was pleased to dignify certain unhealthy and
undignified departures from sane conduct to which a misguided vanity and
an ill-controlled curiosity had led him. He sat for a space thinking how
very Hellenic and Italian and Neronic, and all those things, he had
been. Even now--might one not try a sonnet? A penetrating voice to echo
down the ages, sensuous, sinister, and sad. For a space he forgot
Elizabeth. In the course of half an hour he spoilt three phonographic
coils, got a headache, took a second dose to calm himself, and reverted
to magnanimity and his former design.
At last he faced the unpalatable problem of Denton. It needed all his
newborn magnanimity before he could swallow the thought of Denton; but
at last this greatly misunderstood man, assisted by his sedative and the
near approach of death, effected even that. If he was at all exclusive
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