him.

"That day I buried my last dream of personal happiness. I would have
gladly raised you from the floor, but love was utterly gone. If I am
tenderer to-day than I am wont to be, it is because you mean so much to
me as the symbol of my renunciation. When I realised that I could not
even save the thing I loved from myself, I became hardened and cruel to
others. Not that I know no kindly feeling, but no qualms of conscience
lay their prostrate forms across my path. There is nothing in life for
me but my mission."

His face was bathed in ecstasy. The pupils were luminous, large and
threatening. He had the look of a madman or a prophet.

After a while Ethel remarked: "But you have grown into one of the
master-figures of the age. Why not be content with that? Is there no
limit to your ambition?"

Reginald smiled: "Ambition! Shakespeare stopped when he had reached his
full growth, when he had exhausted the capacity of his contemporaries. I
am not yet ready to lay down my pen and rest."

"And will you always continue in this criminal course, a murderer of
other lives?"

He looked her calmly in the face. "I do not know."

"Are you the slave of your unknown god?"

"We are all slaves, wire-pulled marionettes: You, Ernest, I. There is