temptation was almost too strong.

After a while the sick man became quieter, but he still refused to
take the opiate. He closed his eyes and made no answer to Guy's
repeated supplication. Finally he ceased shaking his head in
negation, and at last breathed regularly like a child asleep.

Afterwards Guy Oscard reproached himself for suspecting nothing.
But he knew nothing of brain diseases--those strange maladies that
kill the human in the human being. He knew, however, why his father
had tried to kill himself. It was not the first time. It was
panic. He was afraid of going mad, of dying mad like his father
before him. People called him eccentric. Some said that he was
mad. But it was not so. It was only fear of madness. He was still
asleep when the nurse came back from the pantomime in a cab, and Guy
crept softly downstairs to let her in.

They stood in the hall for some time while Guy told her in whispers
about the belladonna liniment. Then they went upstairs together and
found Thomas Oscard--the great historian--dead on the floor. The
liniment bottle, which Guy had left on the mantelpiece, was in his
hand--empty. He had feigned sleep in order to carry out his
purpose. He had preferred death, of which the meaning was unknown
to him, to the possibility of that living death in which his father
had lingered for many years. And who shall say that his thoughts
were entirely selfish? There may have been a father's love
somewhere in this action. Thomas Oscard, the eccentric savant, had
always been a strong man, independent of the world's opinion. He
had done this thing deliberately, of mature thought, going straight
to his Creator with his poor human brain full of argument and reason