h forced it down with
an iron hand--down--down--into the depths of his mind, where its cries
for speech came up in faint, inarticulate murmurs. And it tried and
tried, that strange new thing, to struggle from its dungeon and reach
the wide, free halls of his thought, but it could not; it beat against
that unrelaxing iron hand only to fall back again and again. And it
sang and sang and sang, in spite of its struggles and captivity. The
faint, sweet echo came up--if he could but catch the words! If he
could but dash aside that iron hand, and let his brain absorb them!
Surely a word or two must force their way--yes! yes! they had come!
"Her face! her form!"--He tore open his waistcoat; his lungs felt as
if they had been exhausted. Then, how he never knew, he managed to
reach his sofa, and fell face downward upon it; and the next morning,
when his valet came in and drew aside the curtains and let in the
light of mid-day, he found him there as he had fallen.

III.

Harold Dartmouth came of a family celebrated throughout its history
for producing men of marked literary and political ability. Few
generations had passed without a Dartmouth distinguishing himself,
and those members of the family less gifted were not in the habit
of having their fine intellectual qualities called to account. The
consequence was that their young descendant, who inherited all the
family cleverness, although as yet he had betrayed the possession of
none of its higher gifts, paid the penalty of his mental patrimony.
His brain was abnormally active, both through conditions of heredity
and personal incitement; and the cerebral excitation necessarily
produced resulted not infrequently in violent reaction, which took the
form of protracted periods of melancholy. These attacks of melancholy
had begun during his early school-days, when, a remarkably bright
but extremely wild boy, he had been invariably fired with ambition as
examinations approached, and obliged to cram to make up for lost time.
As years went by they grew with his growth, and few months passed
without an attack of the blues more or less violent, no matter
how brief. They came after hours of brooding over his desire to
distinguish himself, and his fatal want of ability; they came during
his intervals of purely intellectual disgust with himself and with
life; but more frequently still they came upon him from no apparent
cause whatever. They were a part of his personality, just as hu