He had a pair of pistols in his room--pretty toys, decorated with silver, wrought in delicate designs--which someone had given to him. He took them down and opened the box and examined them curiously to see how they worked and that all was in order. He looked at the little bullet which could do so much, and weighed it in his hand with a dazed smile, and a kind of strange amusement. So little--and yet in it lay that for which not all the wealth of the world could find an antidote. He charged both weapons with a smile at himself for that too, thinking how very unlikely it was that the two would be wanted, and feeling almost something of the pleasure with which a boy prepares for his first shot, with a half horror, half delight. And then he thought how it would be best to do it. He did not want to disfigure himself unnecessarily, to go through all eternity with a bound-up jaw, like--who was it? Robespierre. This brought a sort of smile upon his face; he knew that it was folly to think of Robespierre; for all eternity--with his face bound up! and yet it amused him to think of the awful, grotesque figure, and to determine that he should not be like that. The temple or behind the ear; that was the better way; and then there would be no disfigurement. The hair would hide it, and Grace would see him and not be horrified--not horrified--only perhaps broken-hearted. But that had to be, any way.
Would he hear the report as sound travels before his senses were all stilled? He heard something, a jar and tinkle, which made him start at the very moment he felt that cold mouth of death. The touch of the pistol and then a jerk of his arm and a clanging world of sound, and then--no more. It disturbed his arm and the steadiness of his touch; and the report followed harmlessly, the bullet going somewhere, he knew not where, leaving him sitting there with the jar of the concussion in the finger which had pulled that trigger. The sound seemed to wake him up like a clap of thunder. He sprang to his feet, flinging the little weapon away with a burning sense of despising himself, of scorn for his intention, scorn for his failure. Was he a coward too, doubly a coward, ready to run away, yet weak enough to be stopped in the act? A sudden heat of shame came over him; he burst into a laugh of scorn, self-ridicule, derision--God in heaven! had he been frightened at the last moment? by what, by his nerves, by a fancied sound, like a child?