re not for me. I'm too heavily handicapped. I
was looking at that young fellow, Decies, to-night and considering his
chances as against my own---- Oh! I know there's wealth in plenty. The
pasture's green enough to make many a man covet it, and the stall's
well bedded-down. I don't complain. Only mother, you know--I know.
Where's the use of denying that which we neither of us ever really
forget?--And then sometimes my blood takes fire. It did to-night. And
the splendour of living being denied me, I--I--am tempted to say a
Black Mass. One must take it out somehow. And I know I could go to the
devil as few men have ever gone, magnificently, detestably, with
subtleties and refinements of iniquity."

He laughed again a little. And, hearing him, his mother's heart stood
still.

"Verily, I have advantages," he continued. "There should be a
picturesqueness in my descent to hell which would go far to place my
name at the head of the list of those sinners who have achieved
immortality----"

"Richard! Richard!" Lady Calmady cried, "do you want to break my heart
quite?"

"No," he answered, simply. "I'd infinitely rather not break your heart.
I have no ambition to see my name in that devil's list except as an
uncommonly ironical sort of second best. But then we must make some
change, some radical change. At times, lately, I've felt as if I was a
caged wild beast--blinded, its claws cut, the bars of its cage soldered
and riveted, no hope of escape, and yet the vigour, the immense longing
for freedom and activity, there all the while."

Richard stretched himself.

"Poor beast, poor beast, poor beast!" he said, shaking his head and
smiling. "I tell you I get absurdly sentimental over it at times."

And then, happily, there came a momentary lapse in the entirety of his
egoism. He turned on his side and took Lady Calmady's hand again, and
fell to playing absently with her bracelets.

"You poor darling, how I torture you," he said. "And yet, now we've
once broken the ice and begun talking of all this, we're bound to talk
on to the finish--if finish there is. You see these few weeks in
London--I've enjoyed them--but still they've made me understand, more
than ever, all I've missed. Life calls, mother, do you see? And though
the beast is blind, and his claws are cut, and his cage bolted, yet,
when life calls, he must answer--must--or run mad--or die--do you see?"

"And you shall answer, my beloved. Never fear, you will answer,"