-old rival of mine in love--you know
who with, the fellow I had a fight with on the steamer--both kids--first
man to come and congratulate me this morning. Admits that I licked him
then as a boy, and have licked him since as a man--took better degree
than he did. Still, nice of him to come, wasn't it? Come on, Ernshaw;
don't stand there staring. Come on and have a drink, too, and
congratulate, you old stick. Never mind about last night, I've got that
all under now; fought it for two years and beaten it. Can take a drink
now without fear of consequences. Taken lots this morning, and look at
me, sober as the Chancellor. Why, dad, what's the matter?"

Sir Arthur Maxwell had come up to Oxford to see his own old academic
triumphs repeated with added brilliance by his son. He had fully
approved of all that Vane had done during the two years' probation which
he had set himself, and he had firmly believed that the end of it all
would be, as he had many a time said to Enid's father, that the hard
study, the strenuous mental discipline, and the stress of healthy
emulation, would utterly destroy the germs of that morbid feeling which,
for a time at least, had poisoned the promise of his son's youth. He had
only arrived from Town, bringing Enid and her father, that morning, as
they had found it impossible to get rooms in Oxford over night. He had
met Ernshaw in the High, and they had come together to Vane's rooms to
find _this_!

Like a flash that other scene in Warwick Gardens came back to him. While
his son was speaking he had looked into his eyes and seen that mocking,
dancing flame which he had now a doubly terrible reason to remember, and
to see it there in his eyes now on the morning of the crowning day of
his youth, shining like a bale-fire of ruin through the morning sky of
his new life. It was like looking down into hell itself.

As Vane came towards him he staggered back as though he hardly
recognised him. Then, for the first time for nearly thirty years since a
well-remembered night among the Indian Hills, the room swam round him
and the light grew dark. He made a couple of staggering steps towards
the sofa, tripped over the edge of a rug, and rolled over, half on and
half off the sofa.

The sight sobered Vane instantaneously, though only for an instant.

"Dad, what's the matter?" he cried again. "My God, Ernshaw, what is it?
Tell me, what is it--what have I done? Let me go and see what's wrong
with him."

Then wi