who
scales an Alpine summit winds himself up with a whiff or so; the orator,
inspired by oxygen, astonishes the House of Commons or the Bar. And the
actor, delirious with oxygen, rushes on the stage; and the clergyman,
drunk on oxygen, mounts the pulpit to preach a Temperance sermon. And the
Dop Doctor of Gueldersdorp prescribes palliatives for guinea-paying
tipplers; and there is not an honest man to rise up and say: 'Physician,
heal thyself!'"

The Windsor chair creaked under Saxham's heavy figure as he got up. His
fierce blue eyes blazed in their sunken caves as he took his hat and stick
from the table.

"What more have you to 'confess'? You did not wrong me. Moralists would
say that you acted conscientiously--played the part of a true friend in
telling--_her_--what you knew!"

"Of my benefactor--the man who had saved my life!" Julius moistened his
dry lips. "Your approving moralist would be the devil's advocate. But I
have not forgotten what your own opinion is of the man who tries to
enhance his own virtues in a woman's eyes by pointing out the vices of a
rival. And, if you will believe me, I was punished for the attempt. Her
look of surprise ... the tone in which she said, 'Did he not save your
life?' that was enough!... Then I--I lost my head, and told her that I
loved her--entreated her to be my wife, only to learn that she never
had--never could----" Julius's thin white fingers knotted themselves
painfully at the back of his stooped head, and his voice came in jerks
between his gritted teeth: "It was revolting to her--a girl reared among
nuns in a Catholic Convent--that a man calling himself a priest should
speak to her of love. There was absolute horror in her look as she learned
the truth." He groaned. "I have never met her eyes since that day without
seeing--or imagining I saw--some reflection of that horror in them!"

"Why torture yourself uselessly with imaginations?" said Saxham, not
unkindly.

He was at the door, upon the threshold of departure, when Julius stopped
him.

"One moment. Has--has Mrs. Saxham ever spoken to you of--this that I have
told you?"

"Never!" answered Saxham, pausing at the door.

"One moment more! Saxham, is it hopeless? Could you not by a desperate
effort break this habit that may--that must--inevitably bring misery to
your wife? In the name of her love for you--in the names of the children
that may be born of it----"

--"Unless you want me to murder you," advis