y. Suddenly I receive an
impression in my mind that I am to go to a certain place at a certain
hour, and that there I shall find Jorsen. I do go, sometimes to an
hotel, sometimes to a lodging, sometimes to a railway station or to the
corner of a particular street and there I do find Jorsen smoking his big
meerschaum pipe. We shake hands and he explains why he has sent for me,
after which we talk of various things. Never mind what they are, for
that would be telling Jorsen's secrets as well as my own, which I must
not do.

It may be asked how I came to know Jorsen. Well, in a strange way.
Nearly thirty years ago a dreadful thing happened to me. I was married
and, although still young, a person of some mark in literature. Indeed
even now one or two of the books which I wrote are read and remembered,
although it is supposed that their author has long left the world.

The thing which happened was that my wife and our daughter were coming
over from the Channel Islands, where they had been on a visit (she was a
Jersey woman), and, and--well, the ship was lost, that's all. The shock
broke my heart, in such a way that it has never been mended again, but
unfortunately did not kill me.

Afterwards I took to drink and sank, as drunkards do. Then the river
began to draw me. I had a lodging in a poor street at Chelsea, and I
could hear the river calling me at night, and--I wished to die as the
others had died. At last I yielded, for the drink had rotted out all
my moral sense. About one o'clock of a wild, winter morning I went to a
bridge I knew where in those days policemen rarely came, and listened to
that call of the water.

"Come!" it seemed to say. "This world is the real hell, ending in the
eternal naught. The dreams of a life beyond and of re-union there
are but a demon's mocking breathed into the mortal heart, lest by its
universal suicide mankind should rob him of his torture-pit. There is
no truth in all your father taught you" (he was a clergyman and rather
eminent in his profession), "there is no hope for man, there is nothing
he can win except the deep happiness of sleep. Come and sleep."

Such were the arguments of that Voice of the river, the old, familiar
arguments of desolation and despair. I leant over the parapet; in
another moment I should have been gone, when I became aware that some
one was standing near to me. I did not see the person because it was too
dark. I did not hear him because of the raving of th