come to him
to-night as Diane stood in the doorway, a slender, vibrant flame of
life keyed exquisitely for the finer, subtler things and hating
everything else.

Still he drank, but the fires of hell were rising now in his eyes.
There was treachery in the bottle. . . . Diane, he chose to fancy, had
refused him justice, salvation, respect to the memory of his
mother! . . . So be it! . . . His to wrench from the mocking,
gold-hungry world whatever he could and however he would. . . . Only
his mother had understood. . . . And Diane had mocked her memory.
Still there had been thrilling moments of tenderness for him in Diane's
life. . . . But Diane was like that--a flash of fire and then
bewildering sweetness. There was the spot Starrett's glass had struck;
there the ancient carven chair in which Diane had mocked his mother;
there was red--blood-red in the dying log--and gold. Blood and
gold--they were indissolubly linked one with the other and the demon of
the bottle had danced wild dances with each of them. A mad trio!
After all, there was only one beside his mother who had ever understood
him--Philip Poynter, his roommate at Yale. And Philip's lazy voice
somehow floated from the fire to-night.

"Carl," he had said, "you've bigger individual problems to solve than
any man I know. You could head a blood revolution in South America
that would outrage the world; or devise a hellish philosophy of
hedonism that by its very ingenuity would seduce a continent into
barking after false gods. You've an inexplicable chemistry of
ungovernable passions and wild whims and you may go through hell first
but when the final test comes--you'll ring true. Mark that, old man,
you'll ring true. I tell you I _know_! There's sanity and will and
grit to balance the rest."

Well, Philip Poynter was a staunch optimist with oppressive ideals, a
splendid, free-handed fellow with brains and will and infernal
persistence.

Four o'clock and the log dying! The city outside was a dark, clinking
world of milkmen and doubtful stragglers, Carl finished the whiskey in
his glass and rose. His brain was very drunk--that he knew--for every
life current in his body swept dizzily to his forehead, focusing there
into whirling inferno, but his legs he could always trust. He stepped
to the table and lurched heavily. Mocking, treacherous demon of the
bottle! His legs had failed him. Fiercely he flung out his arm to
regain his balance. It str