callous neglect!" His eye fell upon the statue of Jean Jacques,
lifted up there by the sturdy men who have for centuries clung to
the golden creeds of civil and religious liberty--the independence
of man--and the freedom of the unshackled human soul. "Poor Rousseau!
seer and parasite, fugitive adventurer, the sport of the great,
the eater of bitter bread--the black bread of dependence! I will
not linger here in a long-drawn agony! Here, I will end it forever,
and to-night!"

There were certain visions of the past which returned to shake
even the iron nerves of Alan Hawke! Face to face now with his half
formed resolution of suicide, the wasted past slowly unrolled itself
before him.

The brief days of his service in India, an abrupt exit from the
service, long years of wandering in Japan and China, as a gentleman
adventurer, and all the singular phases of a nomadic life in Burmah,
Nepaul, Cashmere, Bhootan, and the Pamirs.

He smiled in derision at the recollection of a briefly flattering
fortune which had rebaptized him with a shadowy title of uncertain
origin. Thus far, his visiting card, "Major Alan Hawke, Bombay Club"
had been an easily vised passport, but--alas--good only among his
own kind! He was but a free lance of the polished "Detrimentals,"
and, under this last adverse stroke of fortune, his poor cockboat
was being swamped in the black waters of adversity. He had staked
much upon a little campaign at the Foreign Office in London.
The cold rebuff which he had received to there had carried him in
sheer desperation over to Monaro and incoming onto Geneva, he had
"burned his ships" behind him. Ignorant of the precise manner in