d a
coherent notion of how it had come to pass, of its extent; of why he
found himself lying in the depths, the victim of humiliations so
frightful that they penetrated even to him, stupefied and crazed with
drink and fever though he was. His courage, his self-command were
burnt up by the brandy. His body had at last revolted, was having its
terrible revenge upon the mind that had so long misused it in every
kind of indulgence.

"I'm done for--done for," he repeated audibly again and again, at each
repetition looking round mentally for a fact or a hope that would deny
this assertion--but he cast about in vain. "Yes, I'm done for." And
flinging away the newspaper he settled back and ceased to try to think
of his affairs. After a while tears rolled from under his blue
eyelids, dropped haltingly down his cheeks, spread out upon his lips,
tasted salt in his half-open mouth.

The hansom stopped before his brick and marble palace. The butler
hurried out and helped him alight--not yet thirty-seven, he felt as if
he were a dying old man. "Pay the cabby," he said and groped his way
into the house and to the elevator and mechanically ran himself up to
his floor. His valet was in his dressing-room. He waved him away.
"Get out! And don't disturb me till I ring."

"The doctor--" began Mallow.

"Do as I tell you!"

When he was alone he poured out brandy and gulped it down a drink that
might have eaten the lining straight out of a stomach less powerful
than his. He went from door to door, locking them all. Then he seated
himself in a lounging-chair before the long mirror. He stared toward
the image of himself but was so dim-eyed that he could see nothing but
spinning black disks. "Life's not such a good game even when a man's
winning," he said aloud. "A rotten bad game when he's losing."

His head wabbled to fall forward but he roused himself. "Wife gone--"
The tears flooded his eyes--tears of pity for himself, an injured and
abandoned husband. "Wife gone," he repeated. "Friends gone--" He
laughed sardonically. "No, never had friends, thank God, or I
shouldn't have lasted this long. No such thing as friends--a man gets
what he can pay for. Grip gone--luck gone! What's the use?"

He dozed off, presently to start into acute, shuddering consciousness.
At the far end of the room, stirring, slowly oozing from under the
divan was a--a Thing! He could not define its shape, but he knew that
it was vast, that it wa