must somehow reach the submerged personality and awaken it to the
hideousness of that other, the soulless, heartless automaton that
schemed and executed crimes with mechanical exactitude. He took a long
breath of determination, and again grinned at the farce he was playing
for his own benefit. Through repetition he was beginning to believe in
the fiction of his former intimacy with Marteen. True, he had known him
slightly, had once or twice snatched a hasty luncheon in his company at
one of his clubs; but far from liking each other, the two men had been
fundamentally antagonistic. Neither was Dorothy an excuse for his
peculiar state of mind. He was drawn to her with strong protective
yearning. Her childlike beauty pleased him. He wished she were his
daughter, or a little sister to pet and spoil. But it was not for her
sake that he savagely longed to make the mother into something
different, "remolded nearer to his heart's desire." Was it the woman
herself, or her enigmatic dual personality that held him? He wished he
knew. He found his mind divided, his emotions many and at cross
purposes. His keen, almost clairvoyant intuition was at fault for once.
It sent no sure signal through the fog of his troubled heart.

How would it all end? Ah, how would it end? He sensed the situation as
one of climax. It could not quietly dissolve itself and be absorbed in
the sea of time and forgotten commonplace.

As an outlet for his mental discomfort, his restless spirit busied
itself in hating Victor Mahr. He had always disliked the man; now he
malignantly resented his very existence; Mahr became the personification
of the thing he most wished to forget--the victimizing power of the
woman who had enthralled him. Gard had met the one element he could not
control or change--the past; and his conquering soul raged at its own
impotence.