stretched--the same blackened wilderness of roofs sheltering the same
horde of drinking, filthy, cursing, parasitical creatures; there flared
the gin-palaces, more of them, more brilliantly lit, more gorgeously
decorated. Ten years of my life, and what had I done? What could any
one do? The truth seemed suddenly written across the sky in letters of
fire. I, a poor human creature, had been fighting with a few other
fanatics against the inviolable, the unconquerable laws of nature. The
hideous mistake of all individual effort was suddenly revealed to me.
'We were like a handful of children striving to dam a mighty torrent
with a few handfuls of clay. Better a thousand times that these people
rotted--and died in their holes, that disease should stalk through their
streets, and all the evil passions born of their misery and filth should
be allowed to blaze forth that the whole world might see, so the laws of
the world might intervene, the great natural laws by which alone these
things could be changed. I looked down at myself, then wasted to the
bone, a stranger to the taste of wine or tobacco, to all the joys of
life, a miserable heart-broken wretch, and I cursed that old man and the
thought of him till my lips were dry and my throat ached. I walked back
to my miserable dwelling with a red fire before my eyes, muttering,
cursing that power which stood behind the universe, and which we call
God, that there should be vomited forth into the world day by day, hour
by hour, this black stream of human wretchedness, an everlasting mockery
to those who would seek for the joy of life.

"They took me to the hospital, and they called my illness brain-fever.
But long before they thought me convalescent I was conscious, lying
awake and plotting my escape. With cunning I managed it. Of my wife
and child I never once thought. Every trace of human affection seemed
withered up in my heart. I took the money subscribed for me with a
hypocrite's smile, and I slunk away from England. I went to Montreal in
Canada, and I deliberately entered upon a life of low pleasures. Pardon
me!"

He bent forward and with a steady hand readjusted the shade of a lamp
which was in danger of burning. Lady Caroom leaned back in her chair
with an indrawn sobbing breath. The action at such a moment seemed
grotesque. His own coolness, whilst with steady fingers he probed away
amongst the wounded places of his life, was in itself gruesome.

"My money," he continued