The Outsider (Paperback)

General Books publication date: 2009 Original publication date: 1921 Original Publisher: Duffield and Company Notes: This is a black and white OCR reprint of the original. It has no illustrations and there may be typos or missing text. When you buy the General Books edition of this book you get free trial access to Million-Books.com where you can select from more than a million books for free. Excerpt: CHAPTER IV Paris, October, 1919. Dear Wilfred: I do believe it is well over a year since we last heard from each other, so that instead of apologising for the delay I might as well apologise for troubling the dust on ancient memories. But this being written almost entirely for my personal amusement, I don't think I will apologise at all. You must have heard from various sources that I was not returning to the States. There must have been a regular flutter over there when the news leaked out. Perhaps they don't believe it yet. But if they ask you, tell them it's true -- or better still, tell them that you don't know. Somehow it displeases me to imagine them lifting their eyebrows and saying, "Well, well, so Mortimer Long's staying in Paris for good." Why this should displease me is not clear -- except it's my old sensitiveness about other people's making comments on my business. But here I'm staying, old Wilfred. I have no regrets for America, or, to be more exact, for the collection of foolish people I knew over there. It is really astonishing how indifferent one can become. Where you are now, I have no doubt, you feel yourself inextricably imprisoned in the coil of these personalities; you cannot imagine complete liberation. Yet it is so easy to achieve. You realize here, so quickly, that your disappearance creates very little disturbance. Anyway, it doesn't matter. If there are a few people over there, you, old Professor Worton, and one or two more,'who do regret me, it's of no importance. You feware, as a matter of fact, those people whose interest in me...