“I beg your pardon, John, I didn’t mean to be rude, but I had just been thinking of events scarcely six years old, but such bitter, hopeless memories that it seems as if I had lived a thousand years since the page on which they are written was turned down in the book of Fate—turned down forever.”
He paused, and I said nothing. “I have never spoken of these things,” he continued, “but I think I was something like you at twenty; how sadly I have changed since then!”
He stopped again, and then continued: “I don’t mind telling you my story, if you would care to hear it;” and as I eagerly answered, “Do tell me,” he resumed: “It is a sad story, my little friend, it concerns a woman. Some say, hearts do not break, others, that women’s hearts do sometimes, but that a man’s is tough, and can bear disaster to the affections without material injury. May be it is true, generally speaking, but there are exceptions—the exceptions, I suppose,” he said, musingly, “that philosophers（哲学家） would tell you prove the rule. You see me to-day old and prematurely gray. I have never been a dissipated（沉迷酒色的，放荡的） man. I inherited a fine constitution from my father. I have lived regularly and have never suffered from disease, but I am as you see me, nevertheless. Do you ask me if I am heart broken? I can not say that, but I have mourned over dead and buried hopes for five years, and God’s beautiful world will never look so fair and sweet again to me as the hour when I close my eyes upon it forever.”
He moved slightly in his chair, and said, as if studying on the matter, “It looks like a case of broken heart, don’t it?”