; and if, in this hour, he had
known, he would not have cared. As he rode on and on remorse drew him into
its grasp. Shame seized him that he had let passion be his master, that he
had lost his self-control, had taken a revenge out of all proportion to
the injury and insult to himself. It did not ease his mind that he knew
Constantine Jopp had done the thing out of meanness and malice; for he was
alive to-night in the light of the stars, with the sweet, crisp air
blowing in his face, because of an act of courage on the part of his
school-days' foe. He remembered now that, when he was drowning, he had
clung to Jopp with frenzied arms and had endangered the bully's life also.
The long torture of owing this debt to so mean a soul was on him still,
was rooted in him; but suddenly, in the silent, searching night, some
spirit whispered in his ear that this was the price which he must pay for
his life saved to the world, a compromise with the Inexorable Thing. On
the verge of oblivion and the end, he had been snatched back by relenting
Fate, which requires something for something given when laws are overriden
and doom defeated. Yes, the price he was meant to pay was gratitude to one
of shrivelled soul and innate antipathy; and he had not been man enough to
see the trial through to the end! With a little increased strain put upon
his vanity and pride, he had run amuck. Like some heathen gladiator, he
had ravaged in the ring. He had gone down into the basements of human life
and there made a cockpit for his animal rage, till, in the contest, brain
and intellect had been saturated by the fumes and sweat of fleshly fury.

How quiet the night was, how soothing to the fevered mind and body, how
the cool air laved the heated head and flushed the lungs of the rheum of
passion! He rode on and on, farther and farther away from home, his back
upon the scenes where his daily deeds were done. It was long past midnight
before he turned his horse's head again homeward.

Buried in his thoughts, now calm and determined, with a new life grown up
in him, a new strength different from the mastering force which gave him a
strength in the theatre like one in a delirium, he noticed nothing. He was
only conscious of the omniscient night and its warm, penetrating
friendliness; as, in a great trouble, when no words can be spoken, a cool,
kind palm steals into the trembling hand of misery and stills it, gives it
strength and life and an even pulse. He wa