hat was my mother, too,
an imbecile dipsomaniac, remember--who had sunk to unspeakable
degradation before she became what she is. I was as sober as I am now
when I told my father this--I mean what Carol had told me. I noticed
that there was something strange about him while I was telling him, but
I thought that was just a matter of circumstances, you know----"

"Yes, I think I know, or at any rate I can guess," said Miss Enid, with
angry eyes and tightened lips.

"Very well, then," he went on, "and after that--after my father had
asked me to have a glass of whiskey with him--after I had refused and he
had gone to bed and I was putting the spirit-case away without any idea
of drinking again, one smell of the whiskey seemed to paralyse my whole
mental force. It turned me from a sane man who had had a solemn warning
into a madman who had only one feeling--the craving for alcohol in some
shape. I smelt again, and the smell of it went like fire through my
veins. I tasted it, and then I drank. I drank again and again, until, as
I suppose your mother has told you, I fell on the rug, no longer a man,
but simply a helpless, intoxicated beast. I was utterly insensible to
everything about me, I didn't care whether I lived or died. When I woke
and thought about it I would a thousand times rather have been dead.

"It wasn't that I wanted the liquor. I didn't get drunk because I wanted
to. I got drunk, Enid, because I _had_ to; because there was a lurking
devil in my blood which forced me to drink that whiskey just because it
was alcohol, because it was drink, because it was the element ready to
respond to that craving which I have inherited from this unhappy mother
of mine.

"Do you know what that means, Enid? I don't think you do. It means that
my blood has been poisoned from my very birth. Of course, you don't know
this. Your parents don't know it, any more than they know that it is too
late to redeem the ruin which has fallen upon me. That, at least, I can
say with a clear conscience is no fault or sin of mine. Since then I
have thrashed this miserable thing out in every way that I can think of.
I have talked it over with my father, and he has talked it over with
yours. I have been wandering about the park all night trying to find out
what I ought to do--and I think I have found it."

"From which I suppose I am to understand," she replied, in a voice which
was nothing like as firm as she intended it to be, "you mean, Vane--or