There was a silence, then he went on in a hard voice:

"I'd been drinking a lot... as usual.... But it isn't an excuse when
I say that my beastly condition was not due to a drunken stupor. It
just didn't happen to be that time."

She shivered slightly. "It happened to be due to chloral," he added,
reddening painfully again. "I merely wished you to know."

"Yes, they told me," she murmured.

After another silence, during which he had been watching her
askance, he said: "Did you think I had taken that chloral
voluntarily?"

She made no reply. She sat very still, conscious of vague pain
somewhere in her breast, acquiescent in the consciousness, dumb, and
now incurious concerning further details of this man's tragedy.

"Sometimes," he said, "the poor devil who, in chloral, seeks
a-refuge from intolerable pain becomes an addict to the drug.... I
do not happen to be an addict. I want you to understand that."

The painful colour came and went in the girl's face; he was now
watching her intently.

"As a matter of fact, but probably of no interest to you," he
continued, "I did not voluntarily take that chloral. It was
administered to me without my knowledge--when I was more or less
stupid with liquor.... It is what is known as knockout drops, and is