mastery; that no past thought or act goes for nothing at such a time, but
creeps out from the darkness where we thought it had gone for ever, and
does battle with its kind against the common foe. There moved before my
sight three women: one, sweet and unsubstantial, wistful and mute and
very young, not of the earth earthy; one, lissom, grave, with gracious
body and warm abstracted eyes, all delicacy, strength, reserve; the other
and last, daring, cold, beautiful, with irresistible charm, silent and
compelling. And these are the three women who have influenced my life,
who fought in me then for mastery; one from out the unchangeable past,
the others in the tangible and delible present. Most of us have to pass
through such ordeals before character and conviction receive their final
bias; before human nature has its wild trouble, and then settles into
"cold rock and quiet world;" which any lesser after-shocks may modify,
but cannot radically change.

I tried to think. I felt that to be wholly a man I should turn from
those eyes drawing me on. I recalled the words of Clovelly, who had said
to me that afternoon, half laughingly: "Dr. Marmion, I wonder how many
of us wish ourselves transported permanently to that time when we didn't
know champagne from 'alter feiner madeira' or dry hock from sweet
sauterne; when a pretty face made us feel ready to abjure all the sinful
lusts of the flesh and become inheritors of the kingdom of heaven? Egad!
I should like to feel it once again. But how can we, when we have been
intoxicated with many things; when we are drunk with success and
experience; have hung on the fringe of unrighteousness; and know the
world backward, and ourselves mercilessly?"

Was I, like the drunkard, coming surely to the time when I could
no longer say yes to my wisdom, or no to my weakness? I knew that,
an hour before, in filling a phial with medicine, I found I was doing