but his brain had
been the controlling force in every action of his life. Hitherto he
had never questioned its complete mastery; but as he pondered over his
fall he knew that it was his brain that had ridden him to it. He no
longer trusted its workings. It had proved rebel and brought him to
disaster.

And with that inner challenge came the supreme ordeal of his life.

As rivers, held imprisoned by winter, will burst their confines in the
spring and overrun the land, all the passions which had been cooled and
tempered by his intellectual discipline swarmed through his arteries in
revolt. No longer was the brain dominating the body; instead, he was
on fire with a hundred mad flames of desire, springing from sources he
knew nothing of. They clung to him by day and haunted him at night.
They sang to him that vice had its own heaven, as well as hell--that
licentiousness held forgetfulness. He heard whispers in the air that
there were drugs which opened perfumed caves of delight, and secret
places where sin was made beautiful with mystic music and incense of
flowers.

When conscience--or whatever it is in us that combats desire--urged him
to close his ears to the voices, he cursed it for a meddlesome thing.
Since Life had thrown down the gauntlet, he would take it up! If he
had to travel the chambers of disgrace and discouragement, he would go
on to the halls of sensual abandonment. Life had torn aside the
curtain--it was for him to search the recesses of experience.

IV.

One night towards the end of January Selwyn had tried to sleep, but the
furies of desire called to him in the dark. He got up and dressed. He
did not know where he was going, but he knew that his steps would be
guided to adventure, to oblivion.

There was a drizzling rain falling, and, with his coat buttoned close
about his throat, he walked from street to street, his breath
quickening with the ecstasy of sensual surrender which had at last come
to him. Men spoke to him from dark corners; women called at him as he
passed; he caught faint glimmers down murky alleys, where opium was
opening the gates to bliss and perdition; but, with a step that was
agile and graceful, he went on, his arteries tingling in anticipation
of the senses' gratification. Once a mongrel slunk out of a lane, and
he called to it. It crawled up to him, and he stooped down to stroke
its head, when, with a yelp of terror, it leaped out of his reach and
ran back in