John Archer

winter began that agitation for the repeal of the laws prohibiting suicide which bore its final fruit in the month of april nineteen twenty when the first government lethal chamber was opened on washington square I had walked down that day from Dr. Archer's house on Madison Avenue, where I had been as a mere formality.

Ever since that fall from my horse four years before, I had been troubled at times with pains in the back of my head and neck, but now for months they had been absent, and the doctor sent me away that day saying there was nothing more to be cured in me.

It was hardly worth his fee to be told that.

I knew it myself.

He had never interested me personally, nor did Constance, except for the fact of her being in love with Louis.

This did occupy my attention, and sometimes even kept me awake at night.

But I knew in my heart that all would come right, and that I should arrange their future as I expected to arrange that of my kind doctor, John Archer.

however i should never have troubled myself about visiting them just then had it not been as i say that the music of the tinkling hammer had for me this strong fascination i would sit for hours listening and listening and when a stray sunbeam struck the inlaid steel, the sensation it gave me was almost too keen to endure.