t
expecting it, it comes forward with a rush, and I might as well try to
check the north wind or the incoming tide. I feel it tingling in my
fingers, scorching my throat, tearing at my reason. I swear I won't give
in, and, in the very act of so swearing, I get up and go out to meet it.
I could break down iron doors to get at the drink when it calls to me.
And, though I seem to be going straight enough now, the moment is coming
when it _will_ call and when I shall obey! Then you won't want to think
you've ever known me, John Barclay, still less to remember that the name
of the Fairy Princess has passed between us. And, in the midst of my
damnation, it will be a drop of cold water on my tongue to know that
I've left you a loophole through which to escape the acknowledgment of
these last few weeks. So far, no one but the 'Rockingham' people, and
Payson, and--and the Fairy Princess--know that we've been together
recently. The 'Rockingham' people don't even know my name. Payson won't
speak. And _she_ certainly won't. So far, so good. Further, I've come to
say good-by. Hereafter, we mustn't see each other"--

"Stop--stop!" broke in the Lieutenant-Governor. "What is all this rot
you're talking? Chuck it, will you? Look here! If you go back on
me--which is bad--and on your Fairy Princess--which is worse--and on
yourself--which is the worst of all"--

"Yes, yes," answered Cavendish, "that's all true. But I'm not talking
about _if_ I go back, I'm talking about _when_ I go back! As I said when
I began, there's no use trying to explain this thing to a man who
doesn't understand it, and no man _can_ understand it except through his
own experience. In this respect, if in no other, you and I talk
different languages, belong on different planets. Could I expect you to
comprehend with me that first give of self-control which lets the demon
loose, and the meaning of the sight or smell of drink at that exact
moment when the will is weakest--the first glass, hastily swallowed, as
a brute, long thirsty, gulps down the water it has craved--the second
and third, taken more slowly--and then, that slackening of every nerve,
that jettisoning of all the moral cargo, that sudden love and
appreciation of the sensuous side of life? Don't you see? It's another
world, that, which you simply can't understand, unless you travel to it
by the road by which I have come--which God forbid!"

"In all this," said Barclay, "I can see no reason why our present