If he had been a strong man he would not have yielded to the series of temptations that had culminated in his crime and his disgrace. Or, passing that, his spirit would not have been broken during the months of his punishment If he had been even of slightly robuster fibre, the sense of degradation would not have palsied his life. He would have gone at once to a new land and made himself master of his destiny. A strong man would not have been found by Yvonne, that August morning, sitting, a self-abhorring outcast before his rich uncle’s door. He would not have lost his wit and courage, when assailed by his prison companion at Hull. He would not have joined fortunes with Noakes in their futile African expedition. A strong man would not have clung for comfort and moral support to the poor ridiculous creature, his own protection of whom was that of the woman rather than that of the man. A strong man would not have yielded to the numbing despair of the after solitude in Africa, nor writhed that night in agony of spirit upon the lonely star-lit veldt And lastly, a strong man would not have had that terror of loneliness which had made him in the first place cling to Yvonne much as a child, afraid of the dark, clings to the hand of another child weaker than itself. By the law of evolution the strong survive and the weak die. But in the eternal struggle between humanity and the pitiless law, conditions are modified, and the sympathy of the race, that expression of revolt which we call civilisation, gives surviving power to the weak, so that not only the strong man has claims to life and love. And when the weak man strives with all his quivering fibres towards strength, he is doing a greater deed than the strong wot of. So Joyce, fool or hero, had performed an act of strength beyond his nature. The strain of the day had been intense. Every nerve in his body was stretched to breaking-point. At last, in the middle of the night, as he was pacing the room, one of them seemed to snap, and he fell forwards on to the bed and broke into a passion of sobbing. Ashamed he buried his face in the blankets and bit them with his teeth. But a grown man’s sobbing is not to be checked, like a child’s. It is a terrible thing, which comes from the soul’s depths and convulses flesh and spirit to their foundations; and it is horrible to hear. The shuddering heaves came into his throat and forced their way in sound through his lips. And the utterances of pain came from him, inarticulate prayers to God to help him, and half-stifled cries for his love and for Yvonne. But he knew that he was wrestling with his spirit for the last time, and that, after this paroxysm of agony, would come calm and strength to meet his fate.