s only salvation from absolute despair had been the
firm consciousness of his own rectitude. In that lay his only comfort,
his only hope, his one, strong-built fabric of defence. If that was
undermined, if that was eaten away, what was there left for him?
Carefully, painfully, and with such minuteness as he could command, he
went over the whole affair from beginning to end, forcing his unwilling
mind--so unaccustomed to such work--to weigh each chance, to gauge each
opportunity. If _this_ were so, if _that_ had been done, then would
_such_ results have followed? Suppose he had not interfered, suppose he
had stood aside, would Lloyd have run such danger, after all, and would
Ferriss at this time have been alive, and perhaps recovering? Had he,
Bennett, been absolutely mad; had he been blind and deaf to reason; had
he acted the part of a brute--a purblind, stupid, and unutterably
selfish brute--thinking chiefly of himself, after all, crushing the
woman who was so dear to him, sacrificing the life of the man he loved,
blundering in there, besotted and ignorant, acting the bully's part,
unnecessarily frightened, cowardly where he imagined himself brave;
weak, contemptibly weak, where he imagined himself strong? Might it not
have been avoided if he had been even merely reasonable, as, in like
case, an ordinary man would have been? He, who prided himself upon the
promptness and soundness of his judgment in great crises, had lost his
head and all power of self-control in this greatest crisis of all.

The doubt came back to him again and again. Trample it, stifle it, dash
it from him as he would, each time it returned a little stronger, a
little larger, a little more insistent. Perhaps, after all, he had made
a mistake; perhaps, after all, Lloyd ran no great danger; perhaps, after
all, Ferriss might now have been alive. All at once Bennett seemed to be
sure of this.

Then it became terrible. Alone there, in the darkness and in the night,
Bennett went down into the pit. Abruptly he seemed to come to
himself--to realise what he had done, as if rousing from a nightmare.
Remorse, horror, self-reproach, the anguish of bereavement, the infinite
regret of things that never were to be again, the bitterness of a
vanished love, self-contempt too abject for expression, the
heart-breaking grief of the dreadful might-have-been, one by one, he
knew them all. One by one, like the slow accumulation of gigantic
burdens, the consequences of his