he man's desperate effort to keep
this one friend from sweeping hostilely out of his life on the wings of
the dark, impious tempest he had roused himself. To his disordered
brain nothing else mattered. Philip had trusted him always--and his
knife had menaced Philip. In Philip's hand lay then, though he could
not know it, the future of the man at his feet. In the silence Carl
fell pitifully to shaking.

"Steady, Carl!" exclaimed Philip kindly and setting the lantern down,
slipped a strong, reassuring arm about the other's shoulders.

In that second Philip proved his caliber. With big inherent generosity
he saw beyond the bloated mask of brutal passion and resolve.
Miraculously he understood and said so. This white, haggard face,
marked cruelly with dissipation and suffering, was the face of a man at
the end of the way. In his darkest hour he needed--not an inexorable
censor--but a friend. With heroic effort Philip put aside the evil
memory of the past hour, though his sore heart rebelled.

"Carl," he said gently, "you've got to pull up. You've come to the
wall at last. You know what lies on the other side?"

Carl shuddered.

"Yes," he whispered. "Madness--or--or suicide. One of the two must
come in time."

"Madness or suicide!" repeated Philip slowly and there was a great pity
in his eyes.

Carl caught the look and his face grew whiter beneath its tan. Chin
and jaw muscles went suddenly taut.

"Philip," he choked, unnerved by the other's gentleness, "you
don't--you can't mean--you believe in me--_yet_?"

"Yes," said Philip steadily. "God help me, I do."

Carl flung himself upon the floor, torn by great dry sobs of agony.
Shaking, Philip turned away. Presently Carl grew quieter and fell to
pouring forth an incoherent recital about a candlestick. From the
meaningless raving of the white, drawn lips came at last a single
sentence of lucid revelation. Philip leaped and shook him roughly by
the shoulder.

"Carl, think! think!" he cried fiercely. "For God's sake, think!
You--don't know what you are saying!"

But Carl repeated the statement again and again, and Philip's eyes grew
sombre. With quick, keen questions he reduced the chaotic yarn to
order.

The wild tale at an end, Carl fell back, limp and very tired.

"In God's name," thundered practical Philip, "why didn't you look in
the other candlestick?"

Carl stared. Then suddenly without a word of warning, he pitched
forward senseless