at all. His
brain, into which, by the power Zeus gave me, I was gazing, became a
perfect vacuum, insulated by the will. It was the kind of experiment
which scientists call "beautiful." And yes, beautiful it was.

But not in the eyes of Nature. She abhors a vacuum. Seeing the enormous
odds against which the Duke was fighting, she might well have stood
aside. But she has no sense of sport whatsoever. She stepped in.

At first I did not realise what was happening. I saw the Duke's eyes
contract, and the muscles of his mouth drawn down, and, at the same
time, a tense upward movement of his whole body. Then, suddenly, the
strain undone: a downward dart of the head, a loud percussion. Thrice
the Duke sneezed, with a sound that was as the bursting of the dams of
body and soul together; then sneezed again.

Now was his will broken. He capitulated. In rushed shame and horror and
hatred, pell-mell, to ravage him.

What care now, what use, for deportment? He walked coweringly round and
round his room, with frantic gestures, with head bowed. He shuffled and
slunk. His dressing-gown had the look of a gabardine.

Shame and horror and hatred went slashing and hewing throughout the
fallen citadel. At length, exhausted, he flung himself down on the
window-seat and leaned out into the night, panting. The air was full of
thunder. He clutched at his throat. From the depths of the black caverns
beneath their brows the eyes of the unsleeping Emperors watched him.

He had gone through much in the day that was past. He had loved and
lost. He had striven to recapture, and had failed. In a strange resolve
he had found serenity and joy. He had been at the point of death, and
had been saved. He had seen that his beloved was worthless, and he had
not cared. He had fought for her, and conquered; and had pled with her,
and--all these memories were loathsome by reason of that final thing
which had all the while lain in wait for him.

He looked back and saw himself as he had been at a score of crucial
moments in the day--always in the shadow of that final thing. He saw
himself as he had been on the playing-fields of Eton; aye! and in the
arms of his nurse, to and fro on the terrace of Tankerton--always in the
shadow of that final thing, always piteous and ludicrous, doomed. Thank
heaven the future was unknowable? It wasn't, now. To-morrow--to-day--he
must die for that accursed fiend of a woman--the woman with the hyena
laugh.

What to do meanw