A hand came suddenly over his shoulder, and was pressed upon his mouth, and at the same instant something exceeding sharp and swift, pointed with death, pierced his back, once and again. Archie saw his hat drop over the parapet into the mist. He tried to struggle, but in vain. He was choking. "It is a dream," he said. "I shall wake. I have dreamt it before." He looked wildly round him. The steadfast dawn was witness from afar. There was the boat still passing down-stream. There was the city before him, with its spires piercing the mist. _Was_ it a dream? The hot blood rushed up into his mouth. The drenched hand released its pressure. "I shall wake," he said, and he fell forward on his face. CHAPTER XIV. "The earth buildeth on the earth castles and towers; The earth sayeth to the earth, 'All shall be ours;' The earth walketh on the earth, glistering like gold; The earth goeth to the earth sooner than it wold." John was late next morning. He had not slept for many nights, and the heavy slumber of entire exhaustion fell on him towards dawn. It was nearly midday when he re-entered the sitting-room where he had sat up so late the night before. He went to Archie's room to see whether he had come in; but it was empty. He was impatient to be gone, to get away from that marble-topped side-table, and the horsehair chairs, and the gilt clock on the mantelpiece. At least, he thought he wished to get away from these things; but it was from himself that he really wanted to get away--from this miserable tortured self that was all that was left of him in this his hour of weakness and prostration; the hour which inevitably succeeds all great exertions of strength. How could he drag this wretched creature about with him? He abhorred himself; the thought of being with himself was intolerable. It seems hard that the nobler side of human nature, which can cheer and urge its weaker brother up such steep paths of duty and self-sacrifice, should desert us when the summit is achieved, leaving the weaker to wail unreproved over its bleeding feet and rent garments till we madden at the sound. An overwhelming sense of loneliness fell on John as he sat waiting for Archie to come in. He had no strong, earnest, steadfast self to bear him company. He felt deserted, lost. Who has not experienced it, that fierce depression and loathing of all life, which, though at the time we know it not, is only the writhing and fainting of the starved human affections! The very ordinary sources from which the sharpest suffering springs, shows us later on how narrow are the limits within which our common human nature works, and from which yet irradiate such diversities of pain. Alphonse disturbed him at last to ask whether he and "Monsieur" would dine at _table d'hote_. "Monsieur," with a glance at Archie's door, had not yet come in.