The ten days or more that had elapsed since Mr. Jocelyn's departure had made him doubtful whether he could hide his weakness or overcome it very readily. He believed he was gaining ground since he was able to reduce the amount of morphia taken, but in order to keep up he had to employ the stimulant more frequently. By this method he hoped never so to lose self-control as to excite suspicion, and also gradually to wean himself from the drug altogether. Of the two he would rather meet Mildred than his wife; the latter must be kept in ignorance, since to destroy her absolute trust was to be destroyed. Mildred would more quickly suspect his fault than would her mother, and if he could hide his failing from her he surely could from his wife, until complete mastery left nothing to be concealed. That day of liberty always seemed but a little in advance. He surely had the will and the strength to give up a mere drug. He who had led charges amid the smoke and thunder of a hundred cannon, and had warded off sabre-thrusts from muscular, resolute hands, was not going to be pricked to death by a little syringe in his own hand. His very thraldom to the habit seemed an improbable, grotesque dream, which some morning would dissipate, but as a matter of experience each morning brought such a profound sinking and "goneness" that his will-power shrivelled like a paper barricade before the scorching intensity of his desire. After the stimulant began its work, however, all things seemed possible, and nothing more so than his power to abandon the drug when he should fully decide upon the act. On the morning of Mildred's arrival, having lifted himself out of his chronic dejection by the lever of opium, he went to meet her with the genuine gladness of a proud, loving father asserting itself like a ray of June light struggling through noxious vapors. She was delighted to find him apparently so well. His walk and the heat had brought color to his face, the drug had bestowed animation and confidence, while his heart gave an honest, loving welcome without the aid of any stimulant. They rode uptown together as happily and hopefully as if the nearly empty car were their own carriage, and they were seeking a home in Fifth Avenue instead of a tenement-house; but the hope and happiness of one was based on youth, love, faith, courage, and inexperience, and of the other on a lurid cloud that would darken steadily except as renewed gleams were shot through it by a light that was infernal. Any kindly man or woman would have smiled appreciatively to see the handsome father and beautiful daughter apparently as absorbed in each other's plans and interests as a young couple seeking the home in which their future life would centre. Who would dream that on this sunny morning, and in a prosaic street-car, the actors of a sad, sad tragedy were on their way to its unsuspected scenes? Who would dream that Mildred and her father, of all others, were the actors?