he chair, motionless, his
consciousness slowly returning like an incoming tide. At length he
started to his feet with an expression of scorn and incredulity; he was
as sound as ever, there was neither scratch nor scar upon him; he had
not shot himself after all.

Curiously, he looked at the revolver, throwing open the breech--the
cylinder was empty; he had forgotten to load it. "What a fool!" he
exclaimed, laughing scornfully, and still laughing he walked to the
centre of the room under the chandelier and turned out the gas.

But when he turned about, facing the day once more, facing that day and
the next and the next throughout all the course of his life, the sense
of his misery returned upon him in its full strength and he raised his
clenched fist to his eyes, shutting out the light. Ah, no, he could not
endure it--the horror of life overpassed the horror of death; he could
not go on living. A new thought had come to him. Wretched as he was, he
saw that in time his anguish of conscience, even his dread of losing his
reason, would pass from him; he would become used to them; yes, even
become used to the dread of insanity, and then he would return once more
to vice, return once more into the power of the brute, the perverse and
evil monster that was knitted to him now irrevocably, part for part,
fibre for fibre. He saw clearly that nothing could save him, he had had
his answer that night, there was to be no miracle. Was it not right,
then, that he should destroy himself? Was it not even his duty? The
better part of him seemed to demand the act; should he not comply while
there yet was any better part left? In a little while the brute was to
take all.

On the shelves above his washstand Vandover found the cartridges in a
green pasteboard box, and loaded all the chambers of the revolver,
carefully. He closed the breech; but as he was about to draw back the
hammer all his courage, all his resolution, crumbled in an instant like
a tower of sand. He did not dare to shoot himself--he was afraid. The
night before he had been brave enough; how was it now that he could not
call up the same courage, the same determination? When he thought over
the wreck, the wretched failure of his life, the dreadful prospect of
the future years, his anguish and his terror were as keen as ever. But
now there was a shrinking of his every nerve from the thought of
suicide, the instinctive animal fear of death, stronger than himself.
His sufferin