as if of late there was a perfect conspiracy against
him. Anxiety, ill luck, and disappointment on every side, with not a
single silver lining to the cloud, which, black and ominous, had
suddenly begun to crowd his horizon.

For the first time the awful certainty flashed through his mind that
he stood at the brink of a catastrophe against which there was no
remedy unless a miracle intervened. But where under the sun should
such a miracle come from? All faith, all hope, dissolved before his
view in these few moments when the whole crushing weight of his guilt,
the whole labyrinth of his failure in life, came clearly to his
consciousness. An unreasoning terror, a fear of himself and a feeling
of helplessness conquered the man, who at other times had never
surrendered to untoward conditions, who had never hesitated to stamp
down all obstacles in his path. Borgert was not capable of deep
feeling or of noble sentiment; he had so far trodden the path of life
with cold egotism, coupled with a superficial view of his surroundings
and a lack of clearer insight into the motives impelling him and
others.

For some time he sat there, pallid, motionless, gazing into the vast
blank space of the unknown future; only the convulsive workings of his
face betrayed the intense agitation of his mind. It was the
psychological crisis in the life of a man who too late becomes aware
of having destroyed his better self, of having annihilated all those
hopes which on entering life had floated before his vision in roseate
hue. And there was nothing to which he could cling, not even a straw
for this man battling with the waves that threatened to engulf him, no
human soul that could or would help him. Despair clutched his throat,
and his breath came thick and short like that of one drowning.

Borgert had struck a balance with himself. He had taken stock, and now
felt clearly that his life was one not only marred but destroyed by
his own fault. He made up his mind to bear the consequences since
escape there was none.

Mechanically he completed his toilet and then went to the barracks to
report himself to the captain for having missed the morning service.
He kept silence about Roese's flight, saying to himself that if the
deserter had the start of pursuit by a sufficiency of time, say
forty-eight hours, he would be a bigger fool indeed than Borgert took
him to be if he had not reached a safe retreat across the frontier.
And that, of course, woul