"After making a hog of myself," Charles said. "No, I'll not feel better, Mike. It is my very soul that is disgusted. I know that I'll never change, and I shall not inflict myself on my family any longer. Don't speak of this, Mike--it is just between you and me. Oh, they will be glad that I've left! Ruth will miss me for a little while, maybe, for the child seems to love me, but children soon forget, and I don't want her to grow up and know me as I really am. If I stay she will hear about me and blush with shame. Think of what a crime that would be, Mike--killing the ideals of a sweet, innocent child. Yes, I'm going, old man. It will be best all around. I'll be dead to everybody that has ever known me. I've lacked manhood up till now, Mike, but I'll use all I have left in trying to make restitution. Obliteration--annihilation! that is the idea, and somehow a soothing one." The kind-hearted servant was deeply moved and he turned his face toward the open window, through which the cries of the newsboys came from the streets below. "Anything I can do for you before I go down?" he asked. "Nothing, thank you," was the answer. "I shall stay here all day, Mike. I don't want to show myself in town. The news of my expulsion from the club will be known everywhere. I don't want to look in the faces of my old friends. Some of them have tried to save me. This will be the last straw. They will give me up now--yes, they will be bound to." "You will be all right by to-morrow, sir," Michael said, huskily. "Lie down and sleep. You need it. You are shaking all over." When the servant had left the room, closing the door behind him, Charles began to walk to and fro again. Presently he paused before the old mahogany bureau and stood hesitating for a moment. "I must--I must," he said. And opening a drawer, he took out a flask of whisky and, filling a glass, he drank. Then holding the flask between him and the light, he muttered, "Oh, you yellow demon of hell, see what you have done for one spineless creature!" Restoring the flask to the drawer, he sat down in an easy-chair, put his hands over his face and remained still for a long time. CHAPTER III He threw himself on his bed. He was lying with his dull stare on the white ceiling when he heard the voices of his sister-in-law and her child in the hall below. The front door opened. They were going out--out into the open air with free consciences, he told himself, with a pang of fresh pain. He stifled a groan with the end of a pillow into which he had turned his face. Then he sat up to listen. It was a step on the stair--a step he had known from childhood. It was that of his brother William. "He is coming! He is coming up here," Charles muttered, aghast. "Well, it is his right. He waited till the others went out so that he can rave and storm to his heart's content. Yes, he is coming. He has heard about the club, and all the rest. This time he will kick me out. He has stood me long enough, in God's name."