I am bound to come. But let me have a few minutes here alone.
Go you down along the path a little way slowly. I will follow
you in a quarter of an hour. And remember we are to be here
together once more!"

Once more! Yes, and then what must be done?


How was this strange case to be dealt with so as to save all
the actors, as far as possible, from needless suffering? That
Keene's mind was disordered at least three of us suspected
already. But to me alone was the nature and seat of the
disorder known. How make the others understand it? They
might easily conceive it to be something different from the
fact, some actual lesion of the brain, an incurable insanity.
But this it was not. As yet, at least, he was no patient for
a mad-house: it would be unjust, probably it would be
impossible to have him committed. But on the other hand they
might take it too lightly, as the result of overwork, or
perhaps of the use of some narcotic. To me it was certain
that the trouble went far deeper than this. It lay in the
man's moral nature, in the error of his central will. It was
the working out, in abnormal form, but with essential truth,
of his chosen and cherished ideal of life. Spy Rock was
something more than the seat of his delusion. it was the
expression of his temperament. The solitary trail that led
thither was the symbol of his search for happiness--alone,
forgetful of life's lowlier ties, looking down upon the world in
the cold abstraction of scornful knowledge. How was such a man
to be brought back to the real life whose first condition is the