their thrones
when they are urgently invoked by men who, as it were, say, "Come and
rule over us!" But once that invocation has been made, once it has been
responded to, there is never again free will for him who has rashly
called upon the power he does not understand, and bowed before the
tyrant whose face he has not seen. I tremble now, as I write; I tremble
as does the bond slave. Yet I neither speak with, nor hear, nor have
sight of, my master. Unless, indeed--but I will not give way to any
madness of the brain. No, no; I do not hear, I do not see, although I am
conscious of, my Tsar, whose unemancipated serf I am.

I need not tell all the story of my soul's impression that was stamped
upon the soul of Kate Walters. Perhaps it is old. Certainly it is sad. I
stamped deceit upon the nature which had not known it, knowledge of evil
where only purity had been, satiety upon temperance. And, worst of all,
I expelled from this girl's heart love for a good man who loved her, and
planted, in its stead, passion for a--must I say a bad, or may I not
cry, a driven man? And all this time Hugh Fraser knew nothing of his
sorrow, growing up swiftly to meet him like a giant. Even now, while I
write these words, he knows nothing of it. As I had carelessly taken
possession of the mind, the very nature of Dr Wedderburn, so now I took
possession of the very nature of Kate Walters. My immense strength, my
abounding physical glory drew her--who had known me a puny
invalid--irresistibly. I won the doctor by my mind; this girl, in the
main, I think, by my body. And when at length I tired of her slightly,
the woman, the gentle woman, sprang up a tigress. I had said one night
that, since I was obliged to go to London, we must part for a while. I
had added that it was well Hugh Fraser lived in complete ignorance of
his betrayal.

"Why?" Kate suddenly cried out.

"Because--because it is best so. He and you--some day."

I paused. She understood my meaning. Instantly the tigress had sprung
upon me. The scene that followed was eloquent. I learned what lives and
moves in the very depths of a nature, stirred by the inexhaustible greed
of passion, twisted by passion's fulfilment, the ardent touched by the
inert. But upon that hurricane has followed an immense and very strange
calm. Kate is almost cold to me, though very sweet. She has acquiesced
in my departure for town. She has come to one mind with me on the
subject of Hugh Fraser. More, she h