for good. His
library and his playthings were installed on the shelves in the upper
part. His personal things occupied a whole drawer below. At night he
slept on the big sofa, and the door to his parents' room was closed.

One night he lay awake unusually long. The old struggle was going on
within him, and there was no peace in sight. His parents had gone to bed
a good while ago, and as far as he was concerned just then, they had
practically ceased to exist.

Then his attention was attracted by a slight noise from their room. The
stillness of the night made it audible to him in spite of the closed
door. At first he listened out of idle curiosity, and to get away from
his own feverish thoughts. Finally he got up without any clear idea of
what he was doing, or why he did it. He began to tremble even as he
moved on tip-toe across the room. At the door he had to kneel down to
steady himself.

He could not tell whether an hour or a minute had passed when he crawled
into bed again. His whole body was on fire. He could feel the pulses at
his temples hammering. At that moment he knew what passion was. The man
in him had been let loose, and he wanted to cry aloud with the
bitter-sweet agony of it.

There was no thought of father or mother in his mind. The people back of
the door were just a man and a woman. The feelings that surged through
his heart, shaking his body volcanically, would have been the same if
those two had been perfect strangers.

No jealousy stirred him. No sense of shame shocked him. His dominant
emotion was envy.

The visit of death had left him unmoved. Now he had been as close to
life in its most intense form, and the effect of it was maddening--a
call that seemed to make further waiting worse than death.

He fell asleep at last with a part of the pillow stuffed into his mouth
to keep his sobs from being heard in the next room....

XIV

The thing had him by the throat. It was stronger than any power he could
bring to bear against it. Fighting it was useless. Resistance meant
merely prolonged torture. Surrender meant sleep--and torture of a
different kind the next day.

Once more he managed to get hold of the book that had wrought such
disastrous change in his entire existence. He read again the chapters
bearing directly on his own case. They seemed more convincing than ever.
There could be no doubt of his degradation or his doom.

XV

He came running home from some errand one evening