strenuous tones. "I
regret it deeply, bitterly, madly,--but yet I know that I have about
done with it!"

"Julius," said Lefevre, "I have been so amazed and bewildered, that I
have found little to say: I can scarcely believe that you are in very
deed the Julius I have known for years. But now let me remind you I am
your friend--"

"Thank you, Lefevre."

"--And I am ready to help you to the uttermost in this crisis, which I
but dimly understand. Tell me about yourself, and let me see what I can
do."

"You can do nothing," said Julius, sadly shaking his head. "Understand
me; I am not going to state a case for diagnosis. Put that idea aside; I
merely wish to confess myself to my friend."

"But surely," said Lefevre, "I may be your physician as well as your
friend. As long as you have life there is hope of life."

"No, no, no, Lefevre! There is a depth of life--life on the lees--that
is worse than death! If I could retrace my steps to the beginning of
this, taking my knowledge with me, then--! But no, I must go my
appointed way, and face what is beyond.... But let me tell you my story.

"You have heard something of my parentage from Dr Rippon, I believe. My
father was Spanish, and my mother was English. I think I was born
without that sense of responsibility to a traditional or conventional
standard which is called Conscience, and that sense of obligation to
consider others as important as myself, which, I believe, they call
Altruism. I do not know whether the lack of these senses had been
manifest in my mother's family, but I am sure it had been in my
father's. For generations it had been a law unto itself; none of its
members had known any duty but the fulfilment of his desires; and I
believe even that kind of outward conscience called Honour had scarcely
existed for some of them. I had from my earliest recollection the nature
of these ancestors: they, though dead, desired, acted, lived in
me,--with something of a difference, due to I know not what. Let me try
to state the fact as it appears to me looking back: I was for myself the
one consciousness, the one person in the world, all else--trees, beasts,
men and women, and what not--being the medium in which, and on which, I
lived. I conceived of nothing around me but as existing to please, to
amuse, to delight me, and if anything showed itself contrary to these
ends, I simply avoided it. What I wished to do I did; what I wished to
have I had;--and nothing else. I