a pendant to his sneeze. And
his sneeze had been a pendant to that outrage which he had been striving
to forget. He had caught cold.

He had caught cold. In the hour of his soul's bitter need, his body had
been suborned against him. Base! Had he not stripped his body of its
wet vesture? Had he not vigorously dried his hair, and robed himself in
crimson, and struck in solitude such attitudes as were most congruous
with his high spirit and high rank? He had set himself to crush
remembrance of that by which through his body his soul had been
assailed. And well had he known that in this conflict a giant demon was
his antagonist. But that his own body would play traitor--no, this he
had not foreseen. This was too base a thing to be foreseen.

He stood quite still, a figure orgulous and splendent. And it seemed as
though the hot night, too, stood still, to watch him, in awe, through
the open lattices of his window, breathlessly. But to me, equipped
to see beneath the surface, he was piteous, piteous in ratio to the
pretension of his aspect. Had he crouched down and sobbed, I should have
been as much relieved as he. But he stood seignorial and aquiline.

Painless, by comparison with this conflict in him, seemed the conflict
that had raged in him yesternight. Then, it had been his dandihood
against his passion for Zuleika. What mattered the issue? Whichever
won, the victory were sweet. And of this he had all the while been
subconscious, gallantly though he fought for his pride of dandihood.
To-night in the battle between pride and memory, he knew from the outset
that pride's was but a forlorn hope, and that memory would be barbarous
in her triumph. Not winning to oblivion, he must hate with a fathomless
hatred. Of all the emotions, hatred is the most excruciating. Of all
the objects of hatred, a woman once loved is the most hateful. Of all
deaths, the bitterest that can befall a man is that he lay down his life
to flatter the woman he deems vilest of her sex.

Such was the death that the Duke of Dorset saw confronting him. Most
men, when they are at war with the past, have the future as ally.
Looking steadfastly forward, they can forget. The Duke's future was
openly in league with his past. For him, prospect was memory. All
that there was for him of future was the death to which his honour was
pledged. To envisage that was to... no, he would NOT envisage it! With a
passionate effort he hypnotised himself to think of nothing