"When the test comes, you'll ring true," came the crackle of Philip's
voice from the fire. "Mark that, old man, you'll ring true. I tell
you, I know." Well, Philip Poynter was his only friend. But Philip
was off somewhere, gone out of his life this many a day in a
characteristic burst of quixotism.

Carl laughed and shuddered, for a mad instant he held the tempting
yellow paper above the fire--and drew it back, stared at the charred
candlestick and laughed again--but there was nothing of laughter in his
eyes. They were darkly ironic and triumphant. There was blood in the
fire--and gold--and Diane had mocked his mother. With a groan Carl
flung his arms out passionately upon the table, torn by a conflict of
the strangely warring forces within him. And with his head drooping
heavily forward upon his hands he lay there until the melancholy dawn
grayed the room into shadowy distinctness, his angle of vision twisted
and maimed by the demon of the bottle. The candlestick loomed
strangely forth from the still grayness; the bottle took form; the
yellowed paper glimmered on the table. Carl stirred and a spasm of
mirthless laughter shook him.

"So," he said, "Philip Poynter loses--and I--I write to Houdania!"

So from the bottle rose a phantom of glittering gold and temptation to
grow in time to a wraith of gigantic proportions. In the bottle
to-night had lain tears and jest and love unending, romance and
passion, treachery and irony--blood and the shadow of Death.