val and confirmation of his belief in human
existence--they engage themselves to marry, but instead of putting
their threat into execution, they enter a railway carriage and blow
out their brains, proving thereby that they had brains to blow out."

When, however, it transpired that letters were found in the pockets
of the suicides to the effect that they had hoped to gain such
notoriety as the daily press can give by their very flagrant
leave-taking of this world, Mike professed much regret, and gravely
assured his astonished listeners that, in the face of these letters
which had unhappily come to light, he withdrew his praise of the
quality of the brains blown out. In truth he secretly rejoiced that
proof of the imperfect sanity of the suicides had come to light and
assured himself that when he did away with Mike Fletcher, that he
would revenge himself on society by leaving behind him a document
which would forbid the usual idiotic verdict, "Suicide while in a
state of temporary insanity," and leave no loophole through which it
might be said that he was impelled to seek death for any extraneous
reasons whatever. He would go to death in the midst of the most
perfect worldly prosperity the mind could conceive, desiring nothing
but rest, profoundly convinced of the futility of all else, and the
perfect folly of human effort.

In such perverse and morbid mind Mike returned to London. It was in
the beginning of August, and the Temple weltered in sultry days and
calm nights. The river flowed sluggishly through its bridges; the
lights along its banks gleamed fiercely in the lucent stillness of a
sulphur-hued horizon. Like a nightmare the silence of the apartment
lay upon his chest; and there was a frightened look in his eyes as he
walked to and fro. The moon lay like a creole amid the blue curtains
of the night; the murmur of London hushed in stray cries, and only
the tread of the policeman was heard distinctly. About the river the
night was deepest, and out of the shadows falling from the bridges
the lamps gleamed with strange intensity, some flickering sadly in
the water. Mike walked into the dining-room. He could see the sward
in the darkness that the trees spread, and the lilies reeked in the
great stillness. Then he thought of the old days when the _Pilgrim_
was written in these rooms, and of the youthfulness of those days;
and he maddened when he recalled the evenings of artistic converse in
John Norton's room--how hi