He had also heard that drowning men could review their entire lives in the few instants that preceded their loss of consciousness, and he acquired a new comprehension of this mystery.  All the experiences of his entire existence swept through his mind again and again with a rapidity and a distinctness that astonished him.  Like a great shuttle darting back and forth through a fabric, his mind seemed to be passing again and again forward and backward through all the scenes of the past.  Finally, and after what seemed uncounted ages, the great clock struck the hour of midnight.  One, two, three—­he stood like a man rooted to the ground,—­four, five, six—­his heart beat louder than the bell,—­seven, eight, nine—­the blood seemed bursting through his temples,—­ten, eleven, twelve!—­the light went out!  The universe seemed to have been instantaneously swallowed up in darkness.  He could not see the figure that crept to the window and gazed down upon him from behind the drapery of the curtains.  He did not know that Pepeeta had fallen upon her knees in an agony deeper than his own, and was gazing down at him through streaming tears.  In those few succeeding moments the sense of his personal loss was displaced by a sudden and overpowering sense of his personal guilt.  The full consciousness of his sin burst upon him.  He saw the selfishness of his love and the wickedness of his lust in a light brighter than day.

There is a kind of rhododendron about Trebizond of which the bees make a honey that drives people mad!  He saw that illicit love was that honey of Trebizond!  He felt, as he had never felt before, the pressure of that terrible power that over all and through all the discords and sins of life makes resistlessly for righteousness.  He perceived that a system of wheels is attached to every thought and act, and that, each one sets in motion the entire machinery of justice.  He felt that every sleepless starry eye in heaven penetrated the guilty secrets of his soul and was pledged to the execution of judgment.

These perceptions confounded him with fear.  His thoughts ceased to move in order, tossing and teasing each other like straws in the wind.  They ceased to illumine the depths of his soul and only hung like flickering candles above a dark mine.

Whether he looked up or down, without or within, he saw no hope, but it was not until after the lapse of many and unnoted moments that the disturbed machinery of his mind began to move.  He awakened as from a nightmare, drew his hands across his eyes and looked this way and that as if to get his bearings.

“What next?” he said aloud, as if speaking to some one else.  Receiving no answer, he turned instinctively toward his gambling house, and went stumbling along through the deserted streets.  What is a man, after all, but a stumbling machine?  Progress is made by falling forward over obstacles!  The poor stumbler tottered across his own threshold into that brilliant room where he had always received an enthusiastic welcome, but which he had not visited since his sickness.  If ever a man needed kindness and encouragement it was he; but his sensitive spirit instantly discovered that all was changed.