DANNY'S OWN STORY BY DON MARQUIS TO MY ... - Pink Monkey

with me, Tom, I looked like thirty cents and felt
like twenty-five of that was plugged.
"I didn't have sense enough to know that it was
most of it grief over her grandfather, and nerves and
hysteria, and the fact that she was only eighteen
years old and lonely, and that being a bride had a
certain amount to do with it. She had told me that
I was a beast, and made me feel like one; and I
took the whole thing hard and believed her. I
made a fine, five-act tragedy out of a jealous fit
I might have softened into comedy if I had had
the wit.
"I wasn't so very old myself, and I hadn't ever
been married before. I should have kept my mouth
shut until it was all over, and then when she began
to cry I should have coaxed her up and made her
feel like I was the only solid thing to hang on to
in the whole world.
"But the bottom had dropped out of the universe
for me. She had said she hated me. I was
fool enough to believe her. I went downtown and
began to drink. I come home late that night.
The poor girl had been waiting up for me--waiting
for hours, and becoming more and more frightened
when I didn't show up. She was over her jealous
fit, I suppose. If I had come home in good shape,
or in anything like it, we would have made up then
and there. But my condition stopped all that.
I wasn't so drunk but that I saw her face change
when she let me in. She was disgusted.
"In the morning I was sick and feverish. I was
more than disgusted with myself. I was in despair.
If she had hated me before--and she had said
she did--what must she do now? It seemed to
me that I had sunk so far beneath her that it would
take years to get back. It didn't seem worth while
making any plea for myself. You see, I was young
and had serious streaks all through me. So when
she told me that she had written home again, and
was going back--was going to leave me, I didn't
see that it was only a bluff. I didn't see that she