He heard no sound of a report; he felt no shock, but a great feebleness ran throughout his limbs, a relaxing and weakening of all his muscles; his eyes were open and he saw everything small and seemingly very far off as through the reversed end of an opera-glass.  Suddenly he fainted.

When Vandover came to himself again it was early morning.  The room was full of daylight, but the gas was still burning.  Little by little the fearful things of the night came back to him; he realized that he had shot himself, and he waited for the end, not daring to move, his eyes closed, his hand still gripping the scratched butt of the revolver in his lap.  For a long time he lay back in the chair, motionless, his consciousness slowly returning like an incoming tide.  At length he started to his feet with an expression of scorn and incredulity; he was as sound as ever, there was neither scratch nor scar upon him; he had not shot himself after all.

Curiously, he looked at the revolver, throwing open the breech—­the cylinder was empty; he had forgotten to load it.  “What a fool!” he exclaimed, laughing scornfully, and still laughing he walked to the centre of the room under the chandelier and turned out the gas.

But when he turned about, facing the day once more, facing that day and the next and the next throughout all the course of his life, the sense of his misery returned upon him in its full strength and he raised his clenched fist to his eyes, shutting out the light.  Ah, no, he could not endure it—­the horror of life overpassed the horror of death; he could not go on living.  A new thought had come to him.  Wretched as he was, he saw that in time his anguish of conscience, even his dread of losing his reason, would pass from him; he would become used to them; yes, even become used to the dread of insanity, and then he would return once more to vice, return once more into the power of the brute, the perverse and evil monster that was knitted to him now irrevocably, part for part, fibre for fibre.  He saw clearly that nothing could save him, he had had his answer that night, there was to be no miracle.  Was it not right, then, that he should destroy himself?  Was it not even his duty?  The better part of him seemed to demand the act; should he not comply while there yet was any better part left?  In a little while the brute was to take all.

On the shelves above his washstand Vandover found the cartridges in a green pasteboard box, and loaded all the chambers of the revolver, carefully.  He closed the breech; but as he was about to draw back the hammer all his courage, all his resolution, crumbled in an instant like a tower of sand.  He did not dare to shoot himself—­he was afraid.  The night before he had been brave enough; how was it now that he could not call up the same courage, the same determination?  When he thought over the wreck, the wretched failure of his life, the dreadful prospect of the future years, his anguish and his