"That's true, and yet--look here, Winfield, you are not one of these whining sentimentalists, and one can speak to you plainly. I was never drunk in my life; that is, I was never in a condition when I couldn't walk straight, and when I couldn't express my thoughts clearly. Nevertheless, it tells, my son, it tells. I don't get excited, and I don't get maudlin. Perhaps it would be better for me if I did." "Why?" "Then I should be afraid. As it is, I am afraid of nothing. And yet, I tell you, I have a bad time when I am alone in the dark. It's hell, man--it's hell!" "Then give it up." "I won't. Because it's all the heaven I have. Besides, I can do nothing without it. Without whisky my mind's a blank, my brains won't act. With it--that is, when I take the right quantity--nothing's impossible, man--nothing. Only----" "What?" "The right quantity increases--that's all. Good-night. When I come to remember, I shan't have the blues to-night." "Why?" "Why? Have I not to make my plans for conquest? I must win my wager!" "Nonsense. You don't mean that?" "But I do. Good-night, old man. Let me dream." Radford Leicester remained only a few minutes after Winfield had left the room. Once he put his hand upon the bell, as if to ring for more whisky, but he checked himself. "No," he said aloud, "I have had too much to-night already." He walked with a steady step across the room, and the waiter, who had hovered around, prepared to turn out the lights. "Good-night, Jenkins," said Leicester, as the man opened the door. "Good-night, sir." "Every one gone to bed except you?" "Nearly every one, sir." "Then I'll leave it to you to arrange for my bath in the morning. Half-past nine will do." "Yes, sir. Hot or cold?" A cold blast of air came along the passage. He was about to say "Cold," but he changed his mind. "Hot, Jenkins," he said. "Good-night." When he got to his bedroom and turned on the lights he looked at the mirror, long and steadily. "Thirty," he said presently, "only thirty, and I'm ordering a hot bath at half-past nine in the morning. It's telling." He wandered around the room aimlessly, but with a steady step. "Yes," he said aloud presently, "I'll do it, if only to have the laugh out of those puppies. What's the odds? Blanche Bridgewater or Olive Castlemaine? Women are all alike--mean, selfish, faithless. Well, what then? I'm in the mood for it." He threw himself in a chair beside the bed and began to think. "Yes," he said presently, "that plan will work." CHAPTER III THE MAN AND THE WOMAN MEET "Olive," said John Castlemaine, after reading the letters which had come to his house one morning, "I am expecting two men here to dinner to-night." "All right, father," said the girl, who was intent on a letter of her own, "I'll tell Mrs. Bray."