men the strain of whose lives had been like the strain of his own, and had left them as it had left him—jaded, joyless, breaking things. Some of them had been broken and had died or were dragging out bruised and tormented days in their own homes or in mad-houses. He always shuddered when he heard their names, and rebelled with sick fear against the mere mention of them. They had worked as he had worked, they had been stricken with the delirium of accumulation—accumulation—as he had been. They had been caught in the rush and swirl of the great maelstrom, and had been borne round and round in it, until having grasped every coveted thing tossing upon its circling waters, they themselves had been flung upon the shore with both hands full, the rocks about them strewn with rich possessions, while they lay prostrate and gazed at all life had brought with dull, hopeless, anguished eyes. He knew—if the worst came to the worst—what would be said of him, because he had heard it said of others. "He worked too hard—he worked too hard." He was sick of hearing it. What was wrong with the world—what was wrong with man, as Man—if work could break him like this? If one believed in Deity, the living creature It breathed into being must be a perfect thing—not one to be wearied, sickened, tortured by the life Its breathing had created. A mere man would disdain to build a thing so poor and incomplete. A mere human engineer who constructed an engine whose workings were perpetually at fault—which went wrong when called upon to do the labor it was made for—who would not scoff at it and cast it aside as a piece of worthless bungling?

"Something is wrong," he muttered, lying flat upon his cross and staring at the yellow haze which had crept through crannies in window-sashes into the room. "Someone is wrong. Is it I—or You?"

His thin lips drew themselves back against his teeth in a mirthless smile which was like a grin.

"Yes," he said. "I am pretty far gone. I am beginning to talk to myself about God. Bryan did it just before he was taken to Dr. Hewletts' place and cut his throat."

He had not led a specially evil life; he had not broken laws, but the subject of Deity was not one which his scheme of existence had included. When it had haunted him of late he had felt it an untoward and morbid sign. The thing had drawn him—drawn him; he had complained against it, he had argued, sometimes he knew—shuddering—that he had raved. Something had seemed to stand aside and watch his being and his thinking. Something which filled the universe had seemed to wait, and to have waited through all the eternal ages, to see what he—one man—would do. At times a great appalled wonder had swept over him at his realization that he had never known or thought of it before. It had been there always—through all the ages that had passed. And sometimes—once or twice—the thought had in some unspeakable, untranslatable way brought him a moment's calm.

But at other times he had said to himself—with a shivering soul cowering within him—that this was only part of it all and was a beginning, perhaps, of religious monomania.

During the last week he had known what he was going to do—he had made up his mind. This abject horror through which others had let themselves be dragged to madness or death he would not endure. The end should come quickly, and no one should be smitten aghast by seeing or knowing how it came. In the crowded shabbier streets of London there were lodging-houses where one, by taking precautions, could end his life in such a manner as would blot him out of any world where such a man as himself had been known. A pistol, properly managed, would obliterate resemblance to any human thing. Months ago through chance talk he had heard how it could be done—and done quickly. He could leave a misleading letter. He had planned what it should be—the story it should tell of a disheartened mediocre venturer of his poor all returning bankrupt and humiliated from Australia, ending existence in such pennilessness that the parish must give him a pauper's grave. What did it matter where a man lay, so that he slept—slept—slept? Surely with one's brains scattered one would sleep soundly anywhere.

He had come to the house the night before, dressed shabbily with the pitiable respectability of a defeated man. He had entered droopingly with bent shoulders and hopeless hang of head. In his own sphere he was a man who held himself well. He had let fall a few dispirited sentences when he had engaged his back room from the woman of the house, and she had recognized him as one of the luckless. In fact, she had hesitated a moment before his unreliable look until he had taken out money from his pocket and paid his rent for a week in advance. She would have that at least for her trouble, he had said to himself. He should not occupy the room after to-morrow. In his own home some days would pass before his household began to make inquiries. He had told his servants that he was going over to Paris for a change. He would be safe and deep in his pauper's grave a week before they asked each other why they did not hear from him. All was in order. One of the mocking agonies was that living was done for. He had ceased to live. Work, pleasure, sun, moon, and stars had lost their meaning. He stood and looked at the most radiant loveliness of land and sky and sea and felt nothing. Success brought greater wealth each day without stirring a pulse of pleasure, even in triumph. There was nothing left but the awful days and awful nights to which he knew physicians could give their scientific name, but had no healing for. He had gone far enough. He would go no farther. To-morrow it would have been over long hours. And there would have been no public declaiming over the humiliating pitifulness of his end. And what did it matter?

How thick the fog was outside—thick enough for a man to lose himself in it. The yellow mist which had crept in under the doors and through the crevices of the window-sashes gave a ghostly look to the room—a ghastly, abnormal look, he said to himself. The fire was smouldering instead of blazing. But what did it matter? He was going out. He had not bought the pistol last night—like a fool. Somehow his brain had been so tired and crowded that he had forgotten.

"Forgotten." He mentally repeated the word as he got out of bed. By this time to-morrow he should have forgotten everything. This time to-morrow. His mind repeated that also, as he began to dress himself. Where should he be? Should he be anywhere? Suppose he awakened again—to something as bad as this? How did a man get out of his body? After the crash and shock what happened? Did one find oneself standing beside the Thing and looking down at it? It would not be a good thing to stand and look down on—even for that which had deserted it. But having torn oneself loose from it and its devilish aches and pains, one would not care—one would see how little it all mattered. Anything else must be better than this—the thing for which there was a scientific name but no healing. He had taken all the drugs, he had obeyed all the medical orders, and here he was after that last hell of a night—dressing himself in a back bedroom of a cheap lodging-house to go out and buy a pistol in this damned fog.

He laughed at the last phrase of his thought, the laugh which was a mirthless grin.

"I am thinking of it as if I was afraid of taking cold," he said. "And to-morrow—!"

There would be no To-morrow. To-morrows were at an end. No more nights—no more days—no more morrows.

He finished dressing, putting on his discriminatingly chosen shabby-genteel clothes with a care for the effect he intended them to produce. The collar and cuffs of his shirt were frayed and yellow, and he fastened his collar with a pin and tied