ide.

"And may God bless you!" said Giulio, solemnly. "If you do not die
to-night, you will never die again."

"I regard it as improbable that we shall die more than once," answered
Dalrymple. "I believe," he said, turning to Griggs, "that when men are
drunk they make mistakes about money. We will pay now, while we are
sober."

Griggs insisted on paying his share. They settled, and Giulio went away
happy.

The two strong men sat opposite to each other, under the high lamp in
the small room, drinking on and on. There was something terrifying in
the Scotchman's determination to lose his senses--something grimly
horrible in the younger man's marble impassiveness, as he swallowed
glass for glass in time with his companion. His face grew paler still,
and colder, but there was a far-off gleaming in the shadowy eyes, like
the glimmer of a light over a lonely plain through the dark.
Dalrymple's spirits did not rise, but he talked more and more, and his
sentences became long and involved, and sometimes had no conclusion. The
wine was telling on him at last. He had never been so strong as Griggs,
at his best, and he was no match for him now. The younger man's
strangely dual nature seemed to place his head beyond anything which
could affect his senses.

Dalrymple talked on and on, rambling from one subject to another, and
not waiting for any answer when he asked a question. He quoted long
ballads and long passages from Shakespeare, and then turned suddenly off
upon a scientific subject, until some word of his own suggested another
quotation.

Griggs sat quietly in his seat, drinking as steadily, but paying little
attention now to what the Scotchman said. Something had got hold of his
heart, and was grinding it like grain between the millstones, grinding
it to dust and ashes. He knew that he could not sleep that night. He
might as well drink, for it could not hurt him. Nothing material had
power to hurt him, it seemed. He felt the pain of longing for the
utterly unattainable, knowing that it was beyond him forever. The
widowhood of the unsatisfied is hell, compared with the bereavement of
complete possession. He had not so much as told Gloria that he had loved
her. How could he, being but one degree above a beggar? The unspoken
words burned furrows in his heart, as molten metal scores smoking
channels in living flesh. Gloria would laugh, if she knew. The torture
made his face white. There was the scorn of himself with it, b