"What did you say?"

"I said that I'd clean out your automatic for you--to-night--if you wish.... It can be an accident or not, just as you say."

"Where?"

"In my own rooms--if it is to be an accident."

"Do you offer--"

"Yes; if you'll marry her afterwards. If you say you will I'll take your word."

"And then you'll be out of your misery, you d.a.m.ned coward!"

"G.o.d knows.... But I think not," said Graylock, under his breath.

Drene twisted the automatic, rose and continued to twirl it, considering. Presently he began to pace the floor, no longer noticing the other man. Once his promenade brought him up facing the wall where a calendar hung.

He stood for a while looking at it absently. After a few moments he stepped nearer, detached the sheet for the present month, then one by one tore off the remaining sheets until he came to the month marked December, Graylock watching him all the while.

"I think it happened on Christmas," remarked Drene turning toward the other and laying a finger on the number 25 printed in red.

Graylock's head bent slightly.

"Very well. Suppose about eleven o'clock on Christmas night you give your automatic a thorough cleaning.

"If you say so."

"You have one?"

"I shall buy one."

"Didn't you come here armed?"

"No."

Drene looked at him very intently. But Graylock had never been a liar.

After a few moments he went over to his desk, replaced the weapon under the papers, and, still busy, said over his shoulder:

"All right. You can go."

VI

He wrote to Cecile once:

Hereafter keep clear of men like Graylock and like me. We're both of a stripe--the same sort under our skins. I've known him all my life. It all depends upon the opportunity, the circ.u.mstances, and the woman. And, what is a woman between friends--between such friends as Graylock and I once were--or between the sort of friends we have now become? Keep clear of such men as we are. We were boys together.

For a week or two he kept his door locked and lived on what the janitor provided for him, never going out of the studio at all.

He did no work, although there were several unexecuted commissions awaiting his attention and a number of sketches, clay studies, and one marble standing around the studio in various stages of progress. The marble was the Annunciation. The head and throat and slender hands were completed, and one slim naked foot.

Sometimes he wandered from one study to the next, vague-eyed, standing for a long time before each, staring, lost in thought. Sometimes, in the evening he read, choosing a book at random among the motley collection in a corner case--a dusty, soiled a.s.sortment of books, ephemeral novels of the moment, ponderous volumes which are in everybody's library but which n.o.body reads, sets of histories, memoirs, essays, beautifully bound and once cared for, but now dirty from neglect--jetsam from a wrecked home.

There had been a time when law, order and neatness formed the basis of Drene's going forth and coming in. He had been exact, precise, fastidious; he had been sensitive to environment, a lover of beautiful things, a man who deeply appreciated any symbol that suggested home and hearth and family.

But when these three were shattered in the twinkling of an eye, something else broke, too. And he gradually emerged from chaos, indifferent to all that had formerly been a part of him, a silent emotionless, burnt out thing, callous to all that he had once cared for.

Yet something of what he had been must have remained latent within him for with unimpaired precision and logic he constructed his clay and chiseled his marble; and there must have been in him something to express, for the beauty of his work, spiritual and material, had set him high among the highest in his profession.

Sometimes sorrow changes the dross from the lamp of the spirit so that it burns with a purity almost unearthly; sometimes sorrow sears, rendering the very soul insensible; and sometimes sorrow remains under the ashes, a living coal steadily consuming all that is n.o.ble, hardening all that is ign.o.ble; and is extinguished leaving a devil behind it--fully equipped to slay the crippled soul.

Alone in his studio at night, motionless in his chair, Drene was becoming aware of this devil. Reading by lamplight he grew conscious of it; recognized it as a companion of many years, now understanding that although pain had ended, hatred had remained, hiding, biding, and very, very quiet.

And suddenly this hatred had flamed like h.e.l.l-fire, amazing even himself--that day when, lifted out of his indifference for an instant by a young girl's gaiety--and with a smile, half-responsive, on his own unaccustomed lips, he had learned from her in the same instant, that the man he had almost ceased to remember was honestly in love with her.

And suddenly he knew that he hated and that he should strike, and that there could be no comparison in perfection between hatred and what perhaps was love.

Sometimes, at night, lying on the studio couch, he found himself still hesitating. Could Graylock be reached after death? Was it possible?

If he broke his word after Graylock was dead could he still strike and reach him through the woman for whose sake he, Graylock, was going to step out of things?

That occupied his mind continually, now. Was there anybody who could tell him about such matters? Did clergymen really know whether the soul survived? And if it did, and if truly there were a h.e.l.l, could a living man add anything to its torments for his enemy's benefit?

One day the janitor, lingering, ventured to ask Drene whether he was feeling quite well.

"Yes" said Drene, "I am well."

The janitor spoke of his not eating. And, as Drene said nothing, he mentioned the fact that Drene had not set foot outside his own quarters in many weeks.

Drene nodded: "I expect to go for a walk this evening."

But he did not. He lay on his couch, eyes open in the darkness, wondering what Graylock was doing, how he lived, what occupied his days.

What were the nights of a condemned man like? Did Graylock sleep? Did he suffer? Was the suspense a living death to him? Had he ever suspected him, Drene, of treachery after he, Graylock, had fulfilled his final part of the bargain.

For a long time, now, a fierce curiosity concerning what Graylock was thinking and doing had possessed Drene. What does a man, who is in good physical health, do, when he is at liberty to compute to the very second how many seconds of life remain for him?

Drene's sick brain ached with the problem day and night.

In November the snow fell. Drene had not been out except in imagination.

Day after day, in imagination, he had followed Graylock, night after night, slyly, stealthily, shirking after him through busy avenues at midday, lurking by shadowy houses at midnight, burning to see what expression this man wore, what was imprinted on his features;--obsessed by a desire to learn what he might be thinking--with death drawing nearer.

But Drene, in the body, had never stirred from his own chilly room--a gaunt, fierce-eyed thing, unkempt, half-clothed, huddled all day in his chair brooding above his bitten nails, or flung starkly across his couch at night staring at the stars through the dirty crust of gla.s.s above.

One night in December when the stars were all staring steadily back at him, and his thoughts were out somewhere in the darkness following his enemy, he heard somebody laughing in the room.