"Yes, _when_!" she blazed back. "And when that happens you'll be dead--dead! Don't you know that? You're playing skittles with dynamite, James Mattock--you're screwing your head into the mouth of a howitzer with a wild horse harnessed to the lanyard! You're mad!" She clung to him convulsively, her head buried in his shabby coat. "Jimmy, give it up ... don't go on asking for death!" Instinctive actress though she was, her passionate outburst was desperately sincere, and Mattock passed a shaking hand across his forehead as if to brush away a veil that clouded his eyes. And yet, when he took her gently by the shoulders and set her from him, the dull blankness of his eyes had given place only to the glimmer of a fanatical light. "There was Sylvia," he said. "I must go on.... She suffered cruelly ... I must...." He spoke as one who repeats a prayer, and as she drew away from him it seemed as if the old insurmountable wall slid into the space between them. She must have realised it, for she made a last fierce effort to break through his armour. "Are you blind?" she whispered tremblingly. "The strain's getting too much for me--and it's not myself I'm worrying about.... I've been blind too, and I've just realised it.... Jim"--a wonderful light was born suddenly in her eyes--"oh, Jimmy"--breathlessly--"Jimmy----" And then, in the old caprice of Fate, the clock struck. The sharp chime of it perked Mattock from his throbbing expectancy, wiped the dawning comprehension from his face, lashed and wrenched and hammered and tortured him back behind the reef that had all but crumbled away--beat him back to the cold matter-of-fact reality of things and his madness.... Flung back into his brain the madness that had come to him one drizzling afternoon when he had sworn to set a Goal above all Prizes.... Gave him back the Ambition--the One Idea.... "I must be going," he said unevenly, for the hurt showed in his voice. "Can't afford to lose my job. Cheer up, Joan." He kissed her--not perfunctorily now, but with all the frustrated longing of his heart. And then he strode swiftly from the place. He saw little of Raegenssen that morning, for the Swede marched straight through the outer office without his customary "Goot morning!" to his clerk, and gave no instructions for the day's work.