He tried to be brave--he was brave; but for weeks thereafter traces of suffering on his face cut her to the heart, and she suffered with him as only a nature like hers was capable of doing. Events were near which would tax his friendship to the utmost. August was passing with its intense heat. The streets of the locality wherein the Jocelyns lived were shamefully neglected, and the sewerage was bad. Mr. Jocelyn was one of the first to suffer, and one day he was so ill from malarial neuralgia that he faltered in the duties of his business. "I can't afford to be ill," he said to himself. "A slight dose of morphia will carry me through the day; surely I've strength of mind sufficient to take it once or twice as a medicine, and then plenty of quinine will ward off a fever, and I can go on with my work without any break or loss; meanwhile I'll look for rooms in a healthier locality." His conscience smote him, warned him, and yet it did not seem possible that he could not take a little as a remedy, as did other people. With the fatuity of a self-indulgent nature he remembered its immediate relief from pain, and forgot the anguish it had caused. He no more proposed to renew the habit than to destroy his life--he only proposed to tide himself over an emergency. The drug was taken, and to his horror he found that it was the same as if he had kindled a conflagration among combustibles ready for the match. His old craving asserted itself with all its former force. His will was like a straw in the grasp of a giant. He writhed, and anathematized himself, but soon, with the inevitableness of gravitation, went to another drug store and was again enchained. [Footnote: It is a sad fact that more than half of those addicted to the opium habit relapse. The causes are varied, but the one given is the most common: it is taken to bridge over some emergency or to give relief from physical pain or mental distress. The infatuated victim says, "I will take it just this once," and then he goes on taking it until it destroys him. I have talked with several who have given way for the second and third time, and with one physician who has relapsed five times. They each had a somewhat different story to tell, but the dire results were in all cases the same. After one indulgence, the old fierce craving, the old fatal habit, was again fixed, with more than its former intensity and binding power.] For a few days Mr. Jocelyn tried to conceal his condition from his family, but their eyes were open now, and they watched him at first with alarm, then with terror. They pleaded with him; his wife went down on her knees before him; but, with curses on himself, he broke away and rushed forth, driven out into the wilderness of a homeless life like a man possessed with a demon. In his intolerable shame and remorse he wrote that he would not return until he had regained his manhood. Alas! that day would never come. CHAPTER XLIII WAS BELLE MURDERED?