“—­And I am ready to help you to the uttermost in this crisis, which I but dimly understand.  Tell me about yourself, and let me see what I can do.”

“You can do nothing,” said Julius, sadly shaking his head.  “Understand me; I am not going to state a case for diagnosis.  Put that idea aside; I merely wish to confess myself to my friend.”

“But surely,” said Lefevre, “I may be your physician as well as your friend.  As long as you have life there is hope of life.”

“No, no, no, Lefevre!  There is a depth of life—­life on the lees—­that is worse than death!  If I could retrace my steps to the beginning of this, taking my knowledge with me, then—!  But no, I must go my appointed way, and face what is beyond....  But let me tell you my story.

“You have heard something of my parentage from Dr Rippon, I believe.  My father was Spanish, and my mother was English.  I think I was born without that sense of responsibility to a traditional or conventional standard which is called Conscience, and that sense of obligation to consider others as important as myself, which, I believe, they call Altruism.  I do not know whether the lack of these senses had been manifest in my mother’s family, but I am sure it had been in my father’s.  For generations it had been a law unto itself; none of its members had known any duty but the fulfilment of his desires; and I believe even that kind of outward conscience called Honour had scarcely existed for some of them.  I had from my earliest recollection the nature of these ancestors:  they, though dead, desired, acted, lived in me,—­with something of a difference, due to I know not what.  Let me try to state the fact as it appears to me looking back:  I was for myself the one consciousness, the one person in the world, all else—­trees, beasts, men and women, and what not—­being the medium in which, and on which, I lived.  I conceived of nothing around me but as existing to please, to amuse, to delight me, and if anything showed itself contrary to these ends, I simply avoided it.  What I wished to do I did; what I wished to have I had;—­and nothing else.  I do not suppose that in these points I was different from most other children of wealthy parents.  Where I differed, I believe, was in having a peculiarly sensitive, and at the same time admirably healthy, constitution of body, which induced a remarkable development of desire and gratification.  I can hardly make you understand, I am sure I cannot make you feel—­I myself cannot feel, I can only remember—­what a bright natural creature I was when I was young.”

“Don’t I remember well,” said Lefevre, “what you were like when I first met you in Paris?”