Yet, for all this, there were times when the possession, the certainty of Lilith's--"sympathy" she had called it, would fail to cheer, to strengthen. Darker and darker grew the days, more hopeless the prospect, and soon Laurence Stanninghame found himself not merely face to face with poverty, but on the actual verge of destitution. Grim, fell spectres haunted his waking hours no less than his dreams. Did he return from a few hours of hard exercise with a fine appetite, that healthy possession served but to remind him how soon he would be without the means of gratifying it. He pictured himself utterly destitute, and through his sleeping visions would loom hideous spectres of want and degradation. Day or night, waking or sleeping, it was ever the same; the horror of the position was ever before him and would not be laid. His mind was a hell to him, his heart of lead, his hard, clear brain deadly, self-pitiless in its purpose. Obviously, there was no further room in the world for such as he. CHAPTER IX. HIS GUARDIAN ANGEL. "I'd sell my immortal soul, twenty times over, for a few thousands of the damnation stuff; but as that article isn't negotiable, why, better make an end of the whole bother." Thus Laurence to himself, though unconsciously aloud. His room was an end one on the _stoep_, and the door was open. The time was the middle of the morning, and he sat thinking. His thoughts were black and bitter--as how indeed should they be otherwise? He had come to this place to make one final effort to retrieve his fortunes. That effort had failed. He had put what little remained to him into various companies--awaiting the boom--and no boom had ensued. On the contrary, things had never looked more dead than at this moment, never since the Rand had been opened up. The bulk of the scrip owned by him was now barely saleable at any price; for the residue he might have obtained a quarter of the price he had paid for it. He was ruined. He was not alone in this--not by a very large number. But what sort of consolation was that? He had received letters too by the last mail. Money! money! That was their burden. He tossed them aside half read. What mattered anything? The accursed luck which had followed him throughout life had stuck to him most consistently--would do so until the end. The end? Ha, had not "the end" come? What more was left? More squalor, more deterioration--gradually dragging him down, down. Heaven knew what he might come to, what final degradation might not be his. The end? Yes, better let it be the end--now, here--while in the full possession of his faculties, in the full possession of the dignity of his self-respect. The dead blank hopelessness of life! Better end it, now, here.