As she finished it the clock struck and she looked up startled; it was eight o’clock; she had been out more than four hours. She sealed her letter, stamped it and rose. For a moment her strength failed her and she stood irresolute, but she was unwilling to trust another hand, and she opened the door and took Rose’s letter down to the post herself, avoiding the elevator again. After she had dropped it in the letter-box in the lower hall, she climbed the long flight wearily to her room. The fearful energy of the last few hours dropped from her like a cloak, the effort was too much and she felt an overpowering weakness, a sinking sensation; she had had such moments before and the doctor had furnished her with some restoratives with a grim injunction to avoid tiring herself. A vision of his grave face flashed across her now and warned her. With the sudden ineffable sinking and yielding, which came over her like a cloud and seemed to drop her slowly, softly into space, was born a keen desire to live; Estelle’s voice pierced her memory like a knife; she seemed to hear that plaintive cry--“Mamma, mamma, come home!” She made one more supreme effort to reach the medicines and was, indeed, but a few yards from the cabinet which held them when her strength yielded to that awful dark cloud which seemed to be pressing down upon her, pushing her lower and lower into the depths of silence. She slipped like water to the floor, her head upon her outstretched arms, a faint shudder ran through her; she was dimly conscious of sinking down, down into a black, fathomless abyss. Again Estelle’s voice quivered through the clouds and mists and reached her heart; she tried to struggle back, up through vague distances, to answer it, but the mists grew thicker; she heard it once again, no more! The soft, ineffable clouds pressed closer, enfolded her; she sank lower, floated off over the edge of space and lost even thought itself. VII FOR three days Fox had been under an almost unbearable strain. Before and after speaking to Margaret of their marriage he had plunged in the same agonizing struggle with himself. What diabolical power had been at work to ruin his life, to frustrate his ambitions? The strong egotism of his nature was aroused in all its absorbing passion. On every hand he saw disaster; he had builded well in all respects but one; in that he had miserably failed, and behold the inevitable result! Like Margaret herself, he saw clearly at last; if he had kept away from her, if he had broken from the spell of her fascination and remained out of reach, this would never have been; he had no one to thank but himself. It is usually so; when we get down to the fundamental principles we have ourselves to blame for the fall of the Tower of Siloam.