eached his finger toward her pulse, then
hurriedly withdrew it and resumed his restless march.

"This is only a nightmare, born of the night and the horrible stillness.
To-morrow in the world of men it will be forgotten, and I shall
rejoice.... But there will be recurring hours of stillness, of solitude.
Will this night repeat itself? Will that thing on the bed haunt me? Will
that cry shriek in my ears? Oh, shame on my selfishness! What am I
thinking of? To let that base, degraded wretch exist, that I may live
peaceably with my conscience? To let four others go to their ruin, that
I may escape a few hours of torment? That I--_I_--should come to this!
'The greatest good of the greatest number. The greatest' ... 'Conscience
makes cowards of us all!'"

To his unutterable self-contempt and terror, he found his will for once
powerless to control the work of the generations that had preceded him.
His iron jaw worked spasmodically, his gray eyes looked frozen. The
marble pallor of his face was suffused with a tinge of green.

"I despise myself!" he exclaimed, with fierce emphasis. "I loathe
myself! I will not yield! '_Conscience_'--they shall be saved, and by
me. '_The greatest_'--I will maintain my intellectual supremacy--that,
if nothing else. She shall die!"

He halted abruptly. Perhaps she was already dead. Then he could reach
the door in a bound and run down-stairs and out of the house. To be
followed...

He ran to the bed. The woman still breathed faintly, her mouth was
twisted into a sardonic and pertinent expression. His hand sought his
pocket and brought forth a case. He opened it and stared at the
hypodermic syringe. His trembling fingers closed about it and moved
toward the woman. Then, with an effort so violent he fancied he could
hear his tense muscles creak, he straightened himself and turned his
back upon the bed. At the same moment he dropped the instrument to the
floor and set his heel upon it.

V

A Monarch of a Small Survey

I

The willows haunted the lake more gloomily, trailed their old branches
more dejectedly, than when Dr. Hiram Webster had, forty years before,
bought the ranchos surrounding them from the Moreno grandees. Gone were
the Morenos from all but the archives of California, but the willows and
Dr. Hiram Webster were full of years and honors. The ranchos were
ranchos no longer. A somnolent city covered their fertile acres,
catching but a whiff at angels' intervals of the met