his degrading vice which was slowly
sapping his manhood and self-respect, which was turning him into a
bowelless egoist. Yes, at times, so great was his suffering over his own
abasement that he had frequently thought of self-destruction as a means
of escape from the dark coil. These were during the luridly lucid
moments which come to fine natures in such thrall--the moments when they
see themselves as they are--when they say, with appalled realisation: "I
am a morphinomaniac. I would sacrifice the happiness of my nearest and
dearest for a dose of the terrible stuff when the horror of lacking it
is upon me." But these moods are varied by others, singularly callous,
when all humanity seems to have ebbed from the nature, and the formula
of the victim's faith might be a paraphrase of that of the Moslem:
"There is no God but Morphia and I am its prophet." This was Chesney's
mood to-night. So far from being touched by Sophy's sudden, almost
childlike appeal, he felt intensely irritated by it. It was all that he
could do not to push away her head roughly from his breast. The tender,
pleading tone of her voice was insufferably annoying to him.

He controlled himself rigidly, however, merely saying in a hard voice,
without touching her, "I could understand you better if you didn't bury
your mouth in my chest. I shall be interested to hear what it is that
you '_know_.'"

Sophy drew back without any anger. She knew his hard voice, his "metal
voice" she was used to call it. She realised sadly that she had made a
mistake in appealing to him. But she would not let him hurt her or make
her angry now. She turned and sat quietly in the chair again--looking
down at her wedding ring--it seemed to fascinate her eyes in those days.
It was so long before she spoke that he said impatiently:

"Well--am I not to share this evidently interesting knowledge of yours?"

She looked at him honestly, trying to keep anything like sentiment from
her eyes and voice.

"You make it so hard--for us both, Cecil," she said.

"Pray what do I make hard?"

"The truth."

"'What is truth?' said doubting Pilate. Can it be that you have found
out? You interest me."

Sophy hesitated. How was she to take him? Was he trying to make her put
it into brutally plain words? Would he prefer that? Or was he only
waiting to launch abuse at her in case she did? As she sat anxiously
pondering, one of those sudden changes of mood took place in Chesney,
that startle eve