Page 124 (1/1)

So--that was all, then

Ascending the stairs, a servant handed hi the crest of the Lenox Club He pocketed it unopened and continued his way

In the darkness of his own roo nerves, a deathly desire tearing at his very vitals, and every vein a tiny trail of fire run riot He had been too long without it, too long to endure the craving aroused by that gay draught fro-cup

The awakened fury of his desire appalled hi him to endure But fear and dismay soon passed in the purely physical distress; he walked the floor, haggard, the sweat starting on his face; he lay with clenched hands, stiffened out across the bed, deafened by the riotous cla out, unconscious how long he could hold out

Crisis after crisis swept him; sometimes he found his feet and e periods of calm intervened; sensation seemed deadened; and he stood as ato breathe lest the eneht, later, to look for his pipe, and he caught a glimpse of himself in the mirror It was a sick man who stared back at him out of hollow eyes, and the physical revulsion shocked hi self-co his teeth and staring back at his reflected face, "I'll kill you yet before I've finished with you!"

Then he filled his pipe, and opening his bedroo his arh the intense stillness he heard the surf,the reefs, and he listened, fascinated, loathing the tides as he feared and loathed the inexorable tides that surged and ebbed with his accursed desire

Once he said to hi the fight for, anyway?" And "Who are you ht for?" echoed his heavy pulses

He had asked that question and received that answer before After all, it had been for his mother's sake alone And now--and now?--his heart beat out another answer; and before his eyes two other eyes seemed to open, fearlessly, sweetly, divinely tender But they were no longer his ray eyes

After the second pipe he re to do, so he opened it and tried to read it, but for a long while, in his confused physical and mental condition, he could make no sense of it