When I awoke all was dark. My throat was parched, there was a horrible racking pain in my head, a nauseating faintness at my heart. But worse than this was the torment of remorse which weighed me down. I had placed myself on a level with my curse, had proved myself worthy of it. There was no excuse for the shameful excess in which I had indulged. A hypocrite, self-convicted, I had become a willing slave to the vice I had condemned, and I could now take rank with the abandoned creatures from whom I had shrank in horror. With difficulty I rose from the floor, upsetting furniture in the effort, and felt my way to my bedroom, where I plunged my head into a basin of cold water, keeping it there for some time, and sucking in the water like a dog. As I stood dripping, in the darkness, I heard a kind of sing-song proceeding from Barbara's room. Stealing into the passage, I listened to the drivel. "Beast John is drunk--dead, dead drunk! He preaches, preaches, preaches--Oh, the good man! Maxwell knows, his mother knows, Louis knows. Ha, ha, ha! How funny! Beast John is drunk--dead, dead drunk! Now let him preach--now let him write to the papers." There was no method in her singing, no rythmical arrangement of the insane song. The words dropped from her lips in disjointed fashion, and there was a taunting exultation in her utterance of them. A frightful temptation assailed me--to kill her and myself, and be done with the world. "What matter?" I muttered. "There is no God! If there were He would not permit such women to live." Even at this distance of time--yes, even though I know that my days are numbered--I am thankful that some mysterious force within me leaped up to fight the demon that would have damned my soul. I was conscious of the inward conflict, the conflict of the two spirits, the good and the evil, which are said to be forever warring for supremacy in a man's heart. I hope I may say now (though I did not believe so then) that my suffering had not crushed all the good out of me, and that there was still some vitality in the better impulses of my being. I did not openly recant the impious words I had muttered; my mood was too sullen for that. I was ready for sin, but not for crime. My life was mine, and I could do with it as I pleased, but it was not within my right to dispose of the life of another mortal. Brooding upon this I fled from the house as from a pestilence. Intent upon self-destruction, I bent my steps riverwards. It was a wretched night. Rain was falling heavily, and there was no light in the sky. The spirit of black death brooded over the city. It was as if nature favored my sinful purpose--or so I chose to interpret the signs.