ength of his
vigorous soul he was struggling to keep control of himself.

For perhaps five minutes he stood there beside the table without
stirring a muscle. He might have been carved out of stone. His eyes were
shut, and only the heaving of the chest betrayed the fact that he was a
living being. Then, with a strange quietness, he lit a match and applied
it to the sheet of paper he held in his hand. The ashes fell slowly
about him, piece by piece, and he blew them from the window-sill into
the air, his eyes following them as they floated away on the summer wind
that breathed so warmly over the world.

He turned back slowly into the room. Although his actions and movements
were absolutely steady and controlled, it was clear that he was on the
edge of violent action. A hurricane might burst upon the still room any
moment. His muscles were tense and rigid. Then, suddenly, he whitened,
collapsed, and sank backwards into a chair, like a tumbled bundle of
inert matter. He had fainted.

In less than half an hour he recovered consciousness and sat up. As
before, he made no sound. Not a syllable passed his lips. He rose
quietly and looked about the room.

Then he did a curious thing.

Taking a heavy stick from the rack in the corner he approached the
mantlepiece, and with a heavy shattering blow he smashed the clock to
pieces. The glass fell in shivering atoms.

"Cease your lying voice for ever," he said, in a curiously still, even
tone. "There is no such thing as _time_!"

He took the watch from his pocket, swung it round several times by the
long gold chain, smashed it into smithereens against the wall with a
single blow, and then walked into his laboratory next door, and hung its
broken body on the bones of the skeleton in the corner of the room.

"Let one damned mockery hang upon another," he said smiling oddly.
"Delusions, both of you, and cruel as false!"

He slowly moved back to the front room. He stopped opposite the bookcase
where stood in a row the "Scriptures of the World," choicely bound and
exquisitely printed, the late professor's most treasured possession, and
next to them several books signed "Pilgrim."

One by one he took them from the shelf and hurled them through the open
window.

"A devil's dreams! A devil's foolish dreams!" he cried, with a vicious
laugh.

Presently he stopped from sheer exhaustion. He turned his eyes slowly to
the wall opposite, where hung a weird array of Eastern swords and