Kelty stood quite still and then walked on more slowly than before. Life was gone, as utterly as though it had never existed. Laborious climb from foetus to adult to ledge, then smashed not by height but by a flaw in one little area of the waxen brain. The flaw had demanded death on a heroic scale; a protest death, to ring down through centuries. A death never to be forgotten. A great brave climactic death. And, blinded by the flaw, the brain never realized that it was a dirty death, a small, shabby, forlorn and meaningless death.
His own death would not be like that. Yet — the thought came as suddenly as a door opens — was it not of the same pattern? Was not his own intense care and preparation as egocentric as the flamboyance of the man on the ledge? What did he want people to say? Norris Kelty had nothing more to live for. And was that what he was really trying to do? To show everyone the tragic extent of his loneliness?
He tried to recapture his determination but he knew that in some way he had gained an objectivity that made his plans seem melodramatic.
He stood outside his club and the first snow of November began to drift and tilt down into the streets, thick fat snowflakes that melted as they struck. He looked up at the slice of gray sky between the buildings and he did something he had not done since childhood: He stuck out the tip of his tongue and moved his head to one side and caught a snowflake on his tongue, tasted the familiar dusty icy nothingness.
A well-dressed woman grinned at him. Norris Kelty smiled back at her with irony and wisdom and self-knowledge. Then he walked quite briskly into the club.
