e discovered that it is medical not
legal treatment that pirate captains of industry stand in need of.
Perhaps the too shrewd financiers of that day will not be fined or
sent to prison but compelled to take courses of hypnotic treatment."

Dr. Annister's gaze, wandering downward, fell upon his companion, and
he came back to the matter in hand with a deprecatory smile.

"Pardon me, Mr. Gordon. I've been going far astray. But the whole
question interests me deeply. Strange, strange, what havoc within a
man's brain that war between right and wrong can make, when his own
fierce desires get mixed up in it! Will you go on, please? After this
first act of cruelty, unintentional doubtless, but afterward
concealed, out of cowardice and the desire to advance his own selfish
interests--then?"

"Why, it was the beginning of a constantly growing habit of
selfishness in thought and action. I could tell you of thousands of
little incidents, each of which helped to strengthen his conception of
himself as the center of everything and his notion that his wishes
must be gratified and his desires satisfied, at whatever cost to
others. This didn't come all at once, you know. It was the growth of
years, and kept on all through his youth and early manhood, till it
reached its present abominable state. And as it grew, so did I."

"Yes, yes!" the physician broke in again. "Every impulse toward
altruistic thought or action that was denied broke off and attached
itself to the other nebula of consciousness. Thus he set up within
himself two centers of consciousness, of moral growth, one altruistic
and the other egotistic. And, as these grew, certain other mental
qualities were caught within them, so that, when the separation was at
last complete, each individuality had, intensified, the qualities
that, mingled together, ought to have gone to the making of an evenly
balanced, highly endowed man."

"That's it. And now the question is, which of us are you going to try
to save? Which will you allow to live?"

"Why, I'm going to try to put you together again, to mingle you into
one proportioned, rounded individuality."

Gordon's manner bristled with aggressiveness. "You can't do it," he
exclaimed abruptly. "It's beyond human power, now. 'All the king's
horses and all the king's men' wouldn't be enough for such a job.
Felix Brand is beyond saving. He chose his part and wilfully kept in
it. Let him suffer the consequences. I was his conscience--t