Helen now did not doubt that in sum the Colossus was a bad man; a creature of abnormal powers of mind who owed the workaday world of men and things a grudge for having been born into it. He was a natural enemy, who at the call of a perverted genius was ready to under-pin civilization, that crazy structure, the moment he got the chance. And that chance was surely coming, unless---- His friendly letter in hand, Helen had now to harden the will with a brief restatement of a dreadful plight. She was luring a man who on the surface was simple and kindly to her house in order to do him to death. As she sat down to breakfast opposite her husband and toyed with dry toast and a cup of tea, a ghoulish sense of nightmare seemed to cause the four walls of their little dining room to contract. John was very pale. He, too, had not slept. At three o’clock he had got up and dressed and had spent the night’s remaining hours downstairs among his books. Helen saw that his hand was trembling as she gave him his cup. He, too, was living on his nerves. This long-drawn Thursday was for both an intolerable day. They now stood together fighting with their wills against an implacable destiny. John, some instinct told her, was already trying to subdue the whole force of his nature to the thought of death. Precisely in what form it would overtake him or when it might be expected to do so, he did all that he could not to allow her to guess. But in the course of another night in which neither of them closed their eyes, words escaped his lips that gave her a clue to the mind process which in the end would destroy him. “Macbeth has murdered sleep,” he whispered to her in the winter darkness. “This side the grave, my darling, I shall never sleep again.” She hugged him close, as a mother hugs a child. Nature, she knew then, was nearing exhaustion. All too soon the will that grappled him to life must relax. And then in a moment of frenzy, of desperation, he would kill himself. It behooved her, as long as was possible, to delay that moment. Friday was already here. And at four o’clock that afternoon Saul Hartz had promised to come to her. Pray Heaven that he did not fail! As Helen lay in bed, however, listening hour by hour to the chime of the clocks of many neighboring steeples, she was haunted by a fear that the man by her side would not be able to carry on through the day. One stroke of a razor while he shaved, one step in front of an electric train, what could be simpler? His controls were yielding. Of that fact there were many indications. The question was, could he now outlast this all-important day? Many times she had urged him to take a bromide, but he had not done so. Such things were likely to prove worse than futile. Death was the penalty he inevitably would have to pay; and his mind and will were at one in that, so far as his soul’s welfare was concerned, it was best that death came to him through his instincts working in a natural and unfettered way.