rew thicker and blacker as the storm-centre came
closer. As yet the forces, from whose linking the lightning springs,
were held apart, and the silence of nature proclaimed the calm before the
storm. Caswall felt the effect of the gathering electric force. A sort
of wild exultation grew upon him, such as he had sometimes felt just
before the breaking of a tropical storm. As he became conscious of this,
he raised his head and caught sight of Mimi. He was in the grip of an
emotion greater than himself; in the mood in which he was he felt the
need upon him of doing some desperate deed. He was now absolutely
reckless, and as Mimi was associated with him in the memory which drove
him on, he wished that she too should be engaged in this enterprise. He
had no knowledge of the proximity of Lady Arabella, and thought that he
was far removed from all he knew and whose interests he shared--alone
with the wild elements, which were being lashed to fury, and with the
woman who had struggled with him and vanquished him, and on whom he would
shower the full measure of his hate.

The fact was that Edgar Caswall was, if not mad, close to the
border-line. Madness in its first stage--monomania--is a lack of
proportion. So long as this is general, it is not always noticeable, for
the uninspired onlooker is without the necessary means of comparison. But
in monomania the errant faculty protrudes itself in a way that may not be
denied. It puts aside, obscures, or takes the place of something
else--just as the head of a pin placed before the centre of the iris will
block out the whole scope of vision. The most usual form of monomania
has commonly the same beginning as that from which Edgar Caswall
suffered--an over-large idea of self-importance. Alienists, who study
the matter exactly, probably know more of human vanity and its effects
than do ordinary men. Caswall's mental disturbance was not hard to
identify. Every asylum is full of such cases--men and women, who,
naturally selfish and egotistical, so appraise to themselves their own
importance that every other circumstance in life becomes subservient to
it. The disease supplies in itself the material for self-magnification.
When the decadence attacks a nature naturally proud and selfish and vain,
and lacking both the aptitude and habit of self-restraint, the
development of the disease is more swift, and ranges to farther limits.
It is such persons who become inbued with the ide