gs; for one life was behind him and the new one
was not yet decided upon, save that here he would stay--here out of the
world, out of the game, far from old associations, cut off, and to be
for ever cut off, from all that he had ever known or seen or felt or
loved!... Loved! When did he ever love? If love was synonymous with
unselfishness, with the desire to give greater than the desire to get,
then he had never known love. He realised now that he had given Kathleen
only what might be given across a dinner-table--the sensuous tribute of
a temperament, passionate without true passion or faith or friendship.
Kathleen had known that he gave her nothing worth the having; for in
some meagre sense she knew what love was, and had given it meagrely,
after her nature, to another man, preserving meanwhile the letter of the
law, respecting that bond which he had shamed by his excesses.

Kathleen was now sitting at another man's table--no, probably at his own
table--his, Charley Steele's own table in his own house--the house he
had given her by deed of gift the day he died. Tom Fairing was sitting
where he used to sit, talking across the table--not as he used to
talk--looking into Kathleen's face as he had never looked. He was no
more to them than a dark memory. "Well, why should I be more?" he asked
himself. "I am dead, if not buried. They think me down among the fishes.
My game is done; and when she gets older and understands life better,
Kathleen will say, 'Poor Charley--he might have been anything!' She'll
be sure to say that some day, for habit and memory go round in a circle
and pass the same point again and again. For me--they take me by the
throat--" He put his hand up as if to free his throat from a grip, his
tongue touched his lips, his hands grew restless.

"It comes back on me like a fit of ague, this miserable thirst. If I
were within sight of Jolicoeur's saloon, I should be drinking hard this
minute. But I'm here, and--" His hand felt his pocket, and he took out
the powders the great surgeon had sent him.

"He knew--how did he know that I was a drunkard? Does a man carry in his
face the tale he would not tell? Jo says I didn't talk of the past, that
I never had delirium, that I never said a word to suggest who I was, or
where I came from. Then how did the doctor--man know? I suppose every
particular habit carries its own signal, and the expert knows the
ciphers." He opened the paper containing the powders, and looked