is offer were honest, he had a secondary
purpose all this while: to get me out of the way lest I should
embarrass his pursuit of Foe and his other scheme of which I am to
tell.

But, on the whole reckoning, I incline to think the man was perfectly
sincere, and even eager to do me this kindness; which--as things
turned out--was really an extravagant one, on the monetary
calculation.

At any rate, after studying his face for a while, I called Jephson
out from my bedroom and told him that I had changed my mind: we would
sail, after all, and he might start re-packing at once. Jephson
fairly beamed.

"But there's one thing I'd like to say," put in Farrell, while it was
obvious that this order overwhelmed him with joy. "I want to have it
clear between us that, joyful as I am at your acceptance, and
grateful as I am for your seeing things in this light, it doesn't in
any way compromise my dealing with Foe."

"If you take my advice," said I, "you'll drop Foe, and all this silly
business of hatred. He has tried it on you, and up to a certain
point it answered. You played him--I'll grant you, unknowingly--a
perfectly damnable trick. Don't smear your soul with any flattering
unction, Mr. Farrell. You wrecked his life; and, in return, he set
himself to wreck yours. Up to that point I can understand, though it
all seems to me infernally silly. But in his monomania he went just
that step too far, and has exchanged thereby the upper hand.
You have the cards now: yet I warn you against playing them. For, as
sure as I sit here, I warn you that in the act of destroying him you
will destroy yourself. I look back on his miserable pursuit, and I
prophesy the end of yours."

"Well, it has taken me through fires of hell," said he; "but I
wouldn't have missed it. I'm the man now, and he's the coward."

"Quite so," said I. "Then be thankful and drop it. Do you want to
retrieve his soul as he has found yours?"

Farrell mused over this for a while. "I can't explain it to you," he
said. "I can't explain it to myself. But that man and I simply
can't give one another up. As I woke it in him, so he wakes in me
something that I can't be without, having once known it. It seems to
be a necessary part of myself."

"There are a great many 'Can'ts' in that confession--for a strong
man," was my comment; "and a trifle too much 'myself' for a man who
has found himself. But you remember that meeting at the Baths, when
you and Jac