For the sin ye do by two and two ye must pay for one by one!
--RUDYARD KIPLING.


When Hugh awoke the morning after Lady Newhaven's party the day was
already far advanced. A hot day had succeeded to a hot night. For a few
seconds he lay like one emerging from the influence of morphia, who
feels his racked body still painlessly afloat on a sea of rest, but is
conscious that it is drifting back to the bitter shores of pain, and who
stirs neither hand nor foot for fear of hastening the touch of the
encircling, aching sands on which he is so soon to be cast in agony once
more.

His mind cleared a little. Rachel's grave face stood out against a dark
background--a background darker surely than that of the summer night. He
remembered with self-contempt the extravagant emotion which she had
aroused in him.

"Absurd," Hugh said to himself, with the distrust of all sudden springs
of pure emotion which those who have misused them rarely escape. And
then another remembrance, which only a sleeping-draught had kept at bay,
darted upon him like a panther on its prey.

He had drawn the short lighter.

He started violently, and then fell back trembling.

"Oh, my God!" he said, involuntarily.