The truth is that Oscar stopped the victoria at almost the first cafe, got down and had an absinthe.

Two or three hundred yards further on, he stopped the carriage again to have another absinthe: at the next stoppage a few minutes later Ross ventured to remonstrate: "You'll kill yourself, Oscar," he cried, "you know the doctors said absinthe was poison to you!" Oscar stopped on the sidewalk: "And what have I to live for, Bobbie ?" he asked gravely.

And Ross looking at him and noting the wreck--the symptoms of old age and broken health--could only bow his head and walk on with him in silence.

What indeed had he to live for who had abandoned all the fair uses of life?
The second scene is horrible: but is, so to speak, the inevitable resultant of the first, and has its own awful moral.

Ross tells how he came one morning to Oscar's death-bed and found him practically insensible: he describes the dreadful loud death-rattle of his breath, and says: "terrible offices had to be carried out." The truth is still more appalling.