wly. She understood what a vicious circle was now.
"You drank to stop yourself being nervous. The stuff makes you
temporarily happy, and then even more nervous afterwards. So you drink
more. Oh, my goodness, how silly!"

"But you don't take into account what a hunger it is, you know," he said
in a low voice. "You don't understand that. I don't think there can be
such another hunger on earth, even love."

"Oh--" she started to speak, and stopped. She had never thought of
love like that, and wanted to tell him so, but that seemed to be
side-tracking. So she went on, "Has it occurred to you that it will make
you ill, kill you in time?"

"Do you think I've had five years at a hospital without seeing
alcoholism?" he said bitterly. "Oh, I know all the diseases--I shall go
mad, I expect. My brain's much weaker than my body."

"I suppose you think it's very nice to go mad?" she said, hating herself
for the futility of her words, wishing she had books or preachments to
hurl at him and convince him.

"Oh, what's it matter?" he said wearily. "Who cares?"

"Have you any idea how horrible it is, Louis?" she asked solemnly, with
all the tragedy of the farm behind her words, compelling him to look at
her.

"Most diseases are horrible--what about cancer?" he said coolly.

"But people can't help cancer, and they can--at least I think so--help
your sort of illness. Louis, I saw the two people I love best on earth
dying. One of them died of cancer, the other of drink. I wasn't going to
tell you that. But when you said it was in your family I was going to
tell you that was no argument. It's been in my family for generations
and generations. I suppose it's in everyone's to some extent. It has
wiped out all my family. But it certainly is not going to wipe out me. I
perhaps should not talk about my family to you, a stranger. Yet somehow
I feel that father would not mind my telling you about him, if it can
help you from suffering as he did. He cured himself."

"How?" he cried with sudden, breathless hopefulness.

"There, that's the awfulness of it. I don't know. I only know that one
day he was drunk, and the next day he was not, and never was again. He
said he gave all his burden to God."

He shook himself impatiently.

"Oh, I can't believe in all that rot!" he said harshly. "I neither trust
God nor myself."

Below deck the mandoline began to twang again, and the soft Italian
voice went on with "La Donna E Mobile" interminably.