sed his eyes and made no answer to Guy's repeated
supplication. Finally he ceased shaking his head in negation, and at
last breathed regularly like a child asleep.

Afterwards Guy Oscard reproached himself for suspecting nothing. But
he knew nothing of brain diseases--those strange maladies that kill the
human in the human being. He knew, however, why his father had tried to
kill himself. It was not the first time. It was panic. He was afraid of
going mad, of dying mad like his father before him. People called him
eccentric. Some said that he was mad. But it was not so. It was only
fear of madness. He was still asleep when the nurse came back from the
pantomime in a cab, and Guy crept softly downstairs to let her in.

They stood in the hall for some time while Guy told her in whispers
about the belladonna liniment. Then they went upstairs together and
found Thomas Oscard--the great historian--dead on the floor. The
liniment bottle, which Guy had left on the mantelpiece, was in his
hand--empty. He had feigned sleep in order to carry out his purpose.
He had preferred death, of which the meaning was unknown to him, to the
possibility of that living death in which his father had lingered for
many years. And who shall say that his thoughts were entirely selfish?
There may have been a father's love somewhere in this action. Thomas
Oscard, the eccentric savant, had always been a strong man, independent
of the world's opinion. He had done this thing deliberately, of mature
thought, going straight to his Creator with his poor human brain full of
argument and reason to prove himself right before the Judge.

They picked him up and laid him reverently on the bed, and then Guy went
for the doctor.

"I could," said the attendant of Death, when he had heard the whole
story--"I could give you a certificate. I could reconcile it, I mean,
with my professional conscience and my--other conscience. He could not
have lived thirty hours--there was an abscess on his brain. But I should
advise you to face the inquest. It might be"--he paused, looking keenly
into the young fellow's face--"it might be that at some future date,
when you are quite an old man, you may feel inclined to tell this
story."

Again the doctor paused, glancing with a vague smile towards the woman
who stood beside them. "Or even nurse--" he added, not troubling to
finish his sentence. "We all have our moments of expansiveness. And it
is a story that might easily be--di