like one intoxicated--he who never before in
his life had lost a grip upon himself. That fact struck at the very
heart of his whole philosophy of life. Always normal--that had been
his boast; never losing his head over this thing or that. It was the
only way a man could keep from worrying. It was the only way a man
could keep sane. The moment you wanted anything like the devil, then
the devil was to pay. This evening he had proved that.

He went back to the affair at Maxim's. He should have known better
than to take her there, anyway. She did not belong in such a place.
She did not belong anywhere he had taken her to-day. To-morrow--but
all this was beside the point.

The question that he would most like to answer at this moment was
whether this last wild episode of Hamilton's was due to absinthe or to
that same weird passion which a few weeks before had led the man to
shoot. It had been beastly of Hamilton to try to reach her lips.
That, doubtless, was the absinthe. It robbed him of his senses. But
the look in the man's eyes when he sang, the awful hunger that burned
in them when he gave his mad toast--those things seemed to spring from
a different source. The man, in a room full of strangers, had seen
only her, had sung only to her. Monte doubted if the crazed fellow saw
even him. He saw no one but this one woman. That was madness--but it
did not come of absinthe. The absinthe may have caused the final utter
breakdown of Hamilton's self-control here and at Madame Courcy's--but
that the desire could be there without it Monte had twice proved to
himself that evening.

Once was when he had struck Hamilton. He alone knew that when he hit
that time it was with the lust to kill--even as Hamilton had shot to
kill. The feeling lasted only the fraction of a second--merely while
his fist was plunging toward Hamilton's chin. But, however brief, it
had sprung from within him--a blood-red, frenzied desire to beat down
the other man. At the moment he was not so much conscious of trying to
protect her as to rid himself of Hamilton.

The second mad moment had come in the cab, when he had looked down at
her lips. As the passion to kill left him, another equally strong
passion had taken its place. He had hungered for her lips--the very
lips Hamilton, a moment before, had attempted to violate. He who all
his life had looked as indifferently upon living lips as upon
sculptured lips had suddenly found himself