to the very centre of my being, I have but to will to be sober and
live decently, and while I continue to will it, I shall be what I desire
to be."

Saxham's eyes hold Julius's, and challenge them. But no shadow of a Dop
Doctor who once reeled the streets of Gueldersdorp rises from those clear
brown depths as the speaker ends, "Don't underestimate the power of the
Human Will, Fraithorn, for it can remove mountains, and raise the living
dead."

"Nor do you venture to deny the Power of the Almighty Hand, Saxham,"
answers the thin, sweet voice of the Churchman; "because It strewed the
myriad worlds in the Dust of the The Infinite, and set the jewelled
feathers in the butterfly's wing, and forged the very intellect whose
power you misuse in uttering the boast that denies It. Think again. Can
you assure me with truth that you have never, in the stress of some great
mental or physical crisis, cried to Heaven for help when the struggle was
at its worst? Think again, Saxham."

But Saxham obstinately shakes his head, still smiling. As he stands there
transfigured by the dark, fierce spirit that has come upon him and
possessed him, there is something about the hulking man with the square,
black head and the powerful frame, that breathes of that superb and
terrible Prince of the Heavenly Hierarchy who fell through a kindred sin,
and the priest in Julius shudders, recognising the tremendous power of
such a nature as this, whether turned towards Evil or bent to achieve
Good. The while, in letters of delicate, keen flame, the denier sees
written on the tables of his inward consciousness the utterance that once
broke from him, as, racked and tortured in body and in soul, he wrestled
with his devil on that unforgettable night.

"O God! if indeed Thou Art, and I must perforce return to live the life of
a man amongst men, help me to burst the chains that fetter me. Help
me--oh, help me to be free!"

And in his heart he knows that the desperate prayer has been granted. But
in this new-born, curious mood of his he will not yield, but combats his
own innermost conviction, being, in a strange, perverted way, even prouder
of this Owen Saxham who has gone down of his own choice to the muddiest
depths of moral and physical decadence, and come up of the strength of his
own will from among the hideous things that hang suspended and drifting in
the primeval sludge, than he ever was of the man before his fall. His is a
combative nature, and th