nsion. Her lips moved, but shaped no words. I tried to speak,
but the sense of my outrageous conduct stifled me.

She could not understand and I could not tell her, of all the torture
which had so culminated. After this, even should the powers of miracle
clear away every other obstacle between us, she would never listen. I
heard my voice groan miserably, and with no further effort at
explanation or apology, I walked, or rather stumbled, to the peg where
my coat hung beside the door and let myself out into the night.

Where I went I could not say. I was tramping along with the aimlessness
of the man whose steps are unguided. My one conscious intention was to
keep going, to kill the rest of the night and to try, as best I might to
bring myself to such a point of sanity that with to-morrow morning I
could return and take my medicine with at least the dignity of the
condemned criminal. Vaguely I planned self-destruction--after I had
faced whatever ordeal awaited me first and I had met the obligation of
supporting Marcus in court. I should tell the two of them my story and
let them at least realize that before I had become the madman and the
brute I had been through such things as might craze a man. Weighborne
was not the sort of husband who would tamely pass without punishment
such an affront to his wife and himself. I hoped that his method of
reprisal would be summary. That would bring a sort of relief, yet for
her sake he must let me be my own executioner, that it might end there.

The night was all a-sparkle under the moonlight, and the air, spiced
with frost, went into the lungs with the tingling stimulation of
needles. I tramped endlessly along the road, and all the heat of my
paroxysm cooled into a chill of self-contempt. Still I had no definite
idea of where I was going--I was simply plunging ahead in an effort to
burn up with physical exertion the restlessness and misery that
possessed me.

It was only when I had walked and run alternately for hours, frequently
halting to sit by the roadside and curse myself, that I realized I must
have come a long way from the house of Cal Marcus, and that the night
must be well spent. I might not have even then returned to a realization
of outward things had I not heard the sound of voices and the patter of
unshod hoofs on the roadbed. Some roistering riders of the night were
making their late way home, and had I been in a less heedless mood,
Marcus' frequent injunction and the