Explore "A Transaction in Hearts" by Edgar Saltus on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
It was midnight when the train halted at Bronx. During the journey Jones had been loquacious and Gonfallon dumb. To the one the illness of the countess represented an eternal farewell to the exigencies of syndicates and publishers; to the other, a refuge from the scandal with which New York would presently resound.
Jones, enveloped in an Inverness, wandered out into voluptuous anticipations of wealth to be. "I can go to Constantinople," he confided to his companion, "or, like Stevenson, I can sail the Southern seas. I can lounge in Quaritch's, or on the Grand Canal. I can go to Ecuador and foment a revolution. I can turn Buddhist and penetrate Tibet. From an editor's chair I can bombard my friends and caress my enemies. I will have time to be noble, to be just, and to forgive. I can disappear as though the earth had swallowed me, or I can write a book to please myself. I can live, as Baudelaire wanted to, in a grot of basalt surrounded by slaves whose sole duty it will be to discover the secret of my immense ennui. Like Flaubert, I can call to a chimera to lift me on its wings. Like the Chimera, I can whisper to the Sphinx, ‘O Unknown, I am amorous of thine eyes. ' On the fingers of my sweethearts I can put the crystallized essence of banknotes. I can even pay my debts -- some of them, at least. I can -- "