clock struck two as he closed the last drawer and knew that that part of
his preparation was completed.

In reading the old letters with their echoes of old incidents, old joys,
old jokes, old days in Paris, Rome, or England, he had been so wafted
back to another time that on pushing in the drawer, which closed with a
certain click of finality, the realization of the present rolled back
on his soul with a curious effect of amazement. For a few minutes it was
as if he had never understood it, never thought of it, before. They were
going to make him, Henry Guion, a prisoner, a criminal, a convict! They
were going to clip his hair, and shave his beard, and dress him in a
hideous garb, and shut him in a cell! They were going to give him
degrading work to do and degrading rules to keep, and degrading
associates to live with, as far as such existence could be called living
with any one at all. They were going to do this for year upon year, all
the rest of his life, since he never could survive it. He was to have
nothing any more to come in between him and his own thoughts--his
thoughts of Olivia brought to disgrace, of the Clay heirs brought to
want, of the Rodman heirs and the Compton heirs deprived of half their
livelihood! He had called it that evening the Strange Ride with Morrowby
Jukes to the Land of the Living Dead, but it was to be worse than that.
It was to be worse than Macbeth with his visions of remorse; it was to
be worse than Vathek with the flame burning in his heart; it was to be
worse than Judas--who at least could hang himself.

He got up and went to a mirror in the corner of the room. The mere sight
of himself made the impossible seem more impossible. He was so fine a
specimen--he could not but know it!--so much the free man, the honorable
man, the man of the world! He tried to see himself with his hair clipped
and his beard shaven and the white cravat and waistcoat replaced by the