e of it.'

He relapsed into silence and shifted his head wearily on the pillow.
Johnston Smyth murmured something muffled and unintelligible in his
sleep. Selwyn placed some new lumps of coal on the fire, the flames
licking them eagerly as the sharp crackle of escaping gases punctured
the sleep-laden air.

'It does sound rather like whining to say it,' said Durwent without
opening his eyes, 'but after I was rusticated at Cambridge I tried to
travel straight. If I had gone then to the Colonies I might have made
a man of myself, but I hung around too long, and got mixed up with one
of the rottenest sets in London. I went awfully low, Selwyn, but booze
had me by the neck, and my conscience wasn't working very hard either.
And then another woman helped me. She was one of those who aren't
admitted among decent people. She came of poor family, and had made a
fairly good name for herself on the stage, and was absolutely straight
until she met that blackguard Moorewell about three years ago.'

'The man you nearly killed?'

'Yes. At any rate, she and I fell in love with each other. I know
it's all damned sordid, but we were both outcasts, and, as that chap
said to-night, it's the people who have failed who lie closest to life.
Once more a woman believed in me, and I believed in a woman. We
planned to get married. We were going away under another name, to make
a new world for ourselves. For weeks I never touched a drop, and it
seemed at last that I could see--just a little light ahead. You don't
know what that means, Selwyn, when a man is absolutely down.'

The smile had died out in the speaker's face and given way to a cold,
gray mist of pain.

'Moorewell heard about it,' went on Durwent, 'and though the blackguard
had discarded her, he grew jealous, and began his devilry again. She
did not tell me, but I know for a long time she was as true to me as I
was to her. Then they went to Paris--I believe he promised to marry
her there. A week later I got a letter from her, begging forgiveness.
He had left her, she said, and she was going away where I should never
find her again. My first impulse was to follow her--and then I started
to drink. God! what nights those were! I waited my time. I watched
Moorewell until one night I knew he was alone. I forced an entrance,
and caught him in his library. . . . As I said before, I was drunk;
and that's what saved his life. I thought at the time he was dead; and
havi