e?" suggested Isbister diffidently, with a glance from his
interlocutor's face of wretchedness to the touring costume he wore.

"That is what I have tried. Unwisely perhaps. I have followed the coast,
day after day--from New Quay. It has only added muscular fatigue to the
mental. The cause of this unrest was overwork--trouble. There was
something--"

He stopped as if from sheer fatigue. He rubbed his forehead with a lean
hand. He resumed speech like one who talks to himself.

"I am a lone wolf, a solitary man, wandering through a world in which I
have no part. I am wifeless--childless--who is it speaks of the childless
as the dead twigs on the tree of life? I am wifeless, childless--I could
find no duty to do. No desire even in my heart. One thing at last I set
myself to do.

"I said, I _will_ do this, and to do it, to overcome the inertia of this
dull body, I resorted to drugs. Great God, I've had enough of drugs! I
don't know if _you_ feel the heavy inconvenience of the body, its
exasperating demand of time from the mind--time--life! Live! We only live
in patches. We have to eat, and then comes the dull digestive
complacencies--or irritations. We have to take the air or else our
thoughts grow sluggish, stupid, run into gulfs and blind alleys. A
thousand distractions arise from within and without, and then comes
drowsiness and sleep. Men seem to live for sleep. How little of a man's
day is his own--even at the best! And then come those false friends,
those Thug helpers, the alkaloids that stifle natural fatigue and kill
rest--black coffee, cocaine--"

"I see," said Isbister.

"I did my work," said the sleepless man with a querulous intonation.

"And this is the price?"

"Yes."

For a little while the two remained without speaking.

"You cannot imagine the craving for rest that I feel--a hunger and
thirst. For six long days, since my work was done, my mind has been a
whirlpool, swift, unprogressive and incessant, a torrent of thoughts
leading nowhere, spinning round swift and steady--" He paused. "Towards
the gulf."

"You must sleep," said Isbister decisively, and with an air of a remedy
discovered. "Certainly you must sleep."

"My mind is perfectly lucid. It was never clearer. But I know I am
drawing towards the vortex. Presently--"

"Yes?"

"You have seen things go down an eddy? Out of the light of the day, out
of this sweet world of sanity--down--"

"But," expostulated Isbister.

The man threw o