on was now beyond his control. He could not now--whether he would or
no--reverse its action, swerve it from its iron path, call it back from
the monstrous catastrophe toward which it was speeding him.

"God help us all!" he muttered.

"Well," said Lloyd expectantly.

Bennett drew a deep breath, his hands falling helplessly at his sides.
In a way he appeared suddenly bowed; the great frame of bone and sinew
seemed in some strange, indefinable manner to shrink, to stagger under
the sudden assumption of an intolerable burden--a burden that was never
to be lifted.

Even then, however, Bennett still believed in the wisdom of his course,
still believed himself to be right. But, right or wrong, he now must go
forward. Was it fate, was it doom, was it destiny?

Bennett's entire life had been spent in the working out of great ideas
in the face of great obstacles; continually he had been called upon to
overcome enormous difficulties with enormous strength. For long periods
of time he had been isolated from civilisation, had been face to face
with the simple, crude forces of an elemental world--forces that were to
be combated and overthrown by means no less simple and crude than
themselves. He had lost the faculty, possessed, no doubt, by smaller
minds, of dealing with complicated situations. To resort to expedients,
to make concessions, was all beyond him. For him a thing was absolutely
right or absolutely wrong, and between the two there was no gradation.
For so long a time had he looked at the larger, broader situations of
life that his mental vision had become all deformed and confused. He saw
things invariably magnified beyond all proportion, or else dwarfed to a
littleness that was beneath consideration. Normal vision was denied him.
It was as though he studied the world through one or the other ends of a
telescope, and when, as at present, his emotions were aroused, matters
were only made the worse. The idea that Ferriss might recover, though
Lloyd should leave him at this moment, hardly presented itself to his
mind. He was convinced that if Lloyd went away Ferriss would die; Lloyd
had said as much herself. The hope that Lloyd might, after all, nurse
him through his sickness without danger to herself was so remote that he
did not consider it for one instant. If Lloyd remained she, like the
other nurse, would contract the disease and die.

These were the half-way measures Bennett did not understand, the
expedients he c