The Fiend that stands beside my bed on all ordinary nights assumes the fantastic aspect of an angel. I fall into my drunken sleep, murmuring that "there is joy in Heaven when one sinner repenteth." I wake up in the morning full of evil thoughts, blear-eyed, and trembling. I am a mockery of humanity, longing, crying for poison. There is only a dull and almost contemptuous memory of the religious ecstasies of the night before. My dreams, my confession, have not the slightest influence upon me. I don't fall again into ruining habits--I continue them, without restraint, without sorrow. * * * * * I will write no more. I am adding another Fear to all the other Fears. I have been making a true picture of what I am, and it is so awful that even my blinded eyes cannot bear to look upon it. Thus these notes, in varying handwriting, indicating the ebb and flow of poison within the brain, cease and say no more. At the bottom of the last page--which was but half filled by the concluding words of the Confession--there is something most terribly significant, most horrible to look at in the light of after events. There is a greenish splash upon the glossy paper, obviously whiskey was spilt there. Beginning in the area of the splashed circle, the ink running, a word of four letters is written. Two letters are cloudy, the others sharp and clear. The word is "Rita." A little lower down, and now right at the bottom of the page, the word is repeated again in large tremulous handwriting, three times. "Rita, Rita, Rita!" The last "Rita" sprawls and tumbles towards the bottom right-hand corner of the page. Two exclamation marks follow it, and it is heavily underscored three times. CHAPTER VII INGWORTH REDUX: TOFTREES COMPLACENS "Les absents ont toujours tort." --_Proverb._ Mr. Herbert Toftrees was at work in the splendidly furnished library of his luxuriously appointed flat at Lancaster Gate--or at least that is how he would have put it in one of his stories, while, before _her_ Remington in the breakfast room Mrs. Herbert Toftrees would have rapped out a detailed description of the furniture. The morning was dark and foggy. The London pavements had that disgustingly cold-greasy feeling beneath the feet that pedestrians in town know well at this time of year. Within the library, with its double windows that shut out all noise, a bright fire of logs burned in the wide tiled hearth. One electric pendant lit the room and another burned in a silver lamp upon the huge writing table covered with crimson leather at which the author sat.