between their two worn
armchairs. His thin, feverish-looking hands, with the fingers strongly
twisted together, rested upon it. His dark eyes glittered with
excitement.

"It will be like this. It is evening--a dark, dull evening, like the
day before yesterday, closing in early, throttling the afternoon
prematurely, as it were. A drizzling rain falls softly, drenching
everything--the sodden leaves of the trees on the Embankment, the road,
which is heavy with clinging yellow mud, the stone coping of the wall
that skirts the river.

"And the river heaves along. Its gray, dirty waves are beaten up by a
light, chilly wind, and chase the black barges with a puny, fretful,
sinister fury, falling back from their dark, wet sides with a hiss of
baffled hatred. Yes, it is dreary weather.

"Do you know, Henley, as I know, the strange, subtle influence of
certain kinds of weather? There are days on which I could do great deeds
merely because of the way the sun is shining. There are days, there are
evenings, when I could commit crimes merely because of the way the
wind is whispering, the river is sighing, the dingy night is clustering
around me. There can be an angel in the weather, or there can be a
devil. On this evening I am describing there is a devil in the night!

"The lights twinkle through the drizzling rain, and they are blurred, as
bright eyes are blurred, and made dull and ugly, by tears. Two or three
cabs roll slowly by the houses on the Embankment.. A few people hurry
past along the slippery, shining pavement. But as the night closes in
there is little life outside those tall, gaunt houses that are so near
the river! And in one of those houses the man comes down to the woman to
tell her the truth.

"There is a devil in the weather that night, as I said, and that devil
whispers to the man, and tells him that it is now his struggle must end
finally, and the new era of unresisted yielding to the vice begin. In
the sinister darkness, in the diminutive, drenching mist of rain, he
speaks, and the man listens, and bows his head and answers 'yes!' It
is over. He has fallen finally. He is resolved, with a strange, dull
obstinacy that gives him a strange, dull pleasure--do you see?--to
go down to the room below, and tell the woman that she has conquered
him--that his power of will is a reed which can be crushed--that
henceforth there shall be two victims instead of one. He goes down."

Andrew paused a moment. His lips were