"Now you've done it," he said. "You'd better go, old lady, and leave me to finish what I've got to do." "It's late for work, Jem," she answered. "You oughtn't to try yourself so much." "It ain't work so much," he said, "as thinking. There's summat I've got to think out." For the moment he seemed quite to forget her. He stood with his hands thrust into his pockets and his feet apart, staring at the carpet. He did not stir when she moved away, and was still standing so when she turned at the door to look at him. What she saw brought her back, hurried and tearful. "Let me stay!" she cried. "Let me stay. There's trouble in your face, Jem, for I see it. Don't keep it from me--for the sake of what we've been through together in times that's past." He bestirred himself and looked up at her. "Trouble!" he repeated. "That's not the word. It's not trouble, old lady, and it's naught that can be helped. There's me and it to fight it out. Go and get your sleep and leave us to it." She went slowly and sadly. She always obeyed him, whatever his wish might be. When the last sound of her faltering feet had died away upon the stairs, he went to the side-board and poured out a glass of raw brandy and drank it. "I want summat to steady me," he said,--"and to warm me." But it did not steady him, at least. When he sat down at the table, the hand he laid upon it shook. He looked at it curiously, clinching and unclinching it. "I'm pretty well done for when it goes like that," he said. "I'm farther gone than I thought. It's all over me--over and through me. I'm shaking like a fool." He broke out with a torrent of curses. "Is it me that's sitting here," he cried, "or some other chap? Is it me that luck's gone agen on every side or a chap that's useder to it?" Among all his pangs of humiliation and baffled passion there was not one so subtle and terrible in its influence upon him as his momentary sense of physical weakness. He understood it less than all the rest, and raged against it more. His body had never failed him once, and now for the first time he felt that its power faltered. He was faint and cold, and trembled not merely from excitement but from loss of strength. Opposite to him, at the other side of the room, was a full-length mirror. Accidentally raising his eyes toward it he caught sight of his own face. He started back and unconsciously glanced behind him. "Who----!" he began. And then he stopped, knowing the face for his own--white-lipped, damp with cold sweat, lined with harsh furrows--evil to see. He got up, shaking his fist at it, crying out through his shut teeth. "Blast her!" he said. "Who's to blame but her?"