shrivelled soul and innate antipathy; and he had not been man enough to
see the trial through to the end! With a little increased strain put
upon his vanity and pride he had run amuck. Like some heathen gladiator
he had ravaged in the ring. He had gone down into the basements of human
life and there made a cockpit for his animal rage, till, in the contest,
brain and intellect had been saturated by the fumes and sweat of fleshly
fury.

How quiet the night was, how soothing to the fevered mind and body, how
the cool air laved the heated head and flushed the lungs of the rheum of
passion! He rode on and on, farther and farther away from home, his back
upon the scenes where his daily deeds were done. It was long past
midnight before he turned his horse's head again homeward.

Buried in his thoughts, now calm and determined, with a new life grown up
in him, a new strength different from the mastering force which gave him
a strength in the theatre like one in delirium, he noticed nothing. He
was only conscious of the omniscient night and its warm penetrating
friendliness; as, in a great trouble, when no words can be spoken, a cool
kind palm steals into the trembling hand of misery and stills it, gives
it strength and life and an even pulse. He was now master in the house
of his soul, and had no fear or doubt as to the future, or as to his
course.

His first duty was to go to Constantine Jopp, and speak his regret like a
man. And after that it would be his duty to carry a double debt his life
long for the life saved, for the wrong done. He owed an apology to La
Touche, and he was scarcely aware that the native gentlemanliness in him
had said through his fever of passion over the footlights: "I beg your
pardon." In his heart he felt that he had offered a mean affront to