"Well, I hope you may have your wish yet," was all that Larcher could say.
"I _should_ like to have just one whack at life before I finish," replied Davenport, gazing thoughtfully into the shadow beyond the lamplight. "Just one taste of comparative happiness."
"I thought I had, for a brief season, but I was deceived." (Larcher remembered the talk of an inconstant woman.) "No, I have never been anything like happy. My father was a cold man who chilled all around him. He died when I was a boy, and left my mother and me to poverty. My mother loved me well enough; she taught me music, encouraged my studies, and persuaded a distant relation to send me to the College of Medicine and Surgery; but her life was darkened by grief, and the darkness fell over me, too. When she died, my relation dropped me, and I undertook to make a living in New York. There was first the struggle for existence, then the sickening affair of that play; afterward, misfortune enough to fill a dozen biographies, the fatal reputation of ill luck, the brief dream of consolation in the love of woman, the awakening,--and the rest of it."
He sighed wearily and turned, as if for relief from a bitter theme, to the book in his hand. He read aloud, from the sonnet out of which they had already been quoting:
'Yet in these thoughts myself almost despising--Haply I think on thee; and then my state, Like to the lark at break of day arising From sullen earth, sings hymns at Heaven's gate; For thy sweet love--'
He broke off, and closed the book. "'For thy sweet love,'" he repeated. "You see even this unhappy poet had his solace. I used to read those lines and flatter myself they expressed my situation. There was a silly song, too, that she pretended to like. You know it, of course,--a little poem of Frank L. Stanton's." He went to the piano, and sang softly, in a light baritone:
'Sometimes, dearest, the world goes wrong, For God gives grief with the gift of song, And poverty, too; but your love is more--'
Again he stopped short, and with a derisive laugh. "What an ass I was! As if any happiness that came to Murray Davenport could be real or lasting!"
"Oh, never be disheartened," said Larcher. "Your time is to come; you'll have your 'whack at life' yet."