himself—­where he could see anything but the point he had determined to gain, the goal he had determined to reach.  His mind was made up.  His furious energy, his resolve to conquer at all costs, had become at last a sort of directed frenzy.  The engine he had set in motion was now beyond his control.  He could not now—­whether he would or no—­reverse its action, swerve it from its iron path, call it back from the monstrous catastrophe toward which it was speeding him.

“God help us all!” he muttered.

“Well,” said Lloyd expectantly.

Bennett drew a deep breath, his hands falling helplessly at his sides.  In a way he appeared suddenly bowed; the great frame of bone and sinew seemed in some strange, indefinable manner to shrink, to stagger under the sudden assumption of an intolerable burden—­a burden that was never to be lifted.

Even then, however, Bennett still believed in the wisdom of his course, still believed himself to be right.  But, right or wrong, he now must go forward.  Was it fate, was it doom, was it destiny?

Bennett’s entire life had been spent in the working out of great ideas in the face of great obstacles; continually he had been called upon to overcome enormous difficulties with enormous strength.  For long periods of time he had been isolated from civilisation, had been face to face with the simple, crude forces of an elemental world—­forces that were to be combated and overthrown by means no less simple and crude than themselves.  He had lost the faculty, possessed, no doubt, by smaller minds, of dealing with complicated situations.  To resort to expedients, to make concessions, was all beyond him.  For him a thing was absolutely right or absolutely wrong, and between the two there was no gradation.  For so long a time had he looked at the larger, broader situations of life that his mental vision had become all deformed and confused.  He saw things invariably magnified beyond all proportion, or else dwarfed to a littleness that was beneath consideration.  Normal vision was denied him.  It was as though he studied the world through one or the other ends of a telescope, and when, as at present, his emotions were aroused, matters were only made the worse.  The idea that Ferriss might recover, though Lloyd should leave him at this moment, hardly presented itself to his mind.  He was convinced that if Lloyd went away Ferriss would die; Lloyd had said as much herself.  The hope that Lloyd might, after all, nurse him through his sickness without danger to herself was so remote that he did not consider it for one instant.  If Lloyd remained she, like the other nurse, would contract the disease and die.

These were the half-way measures Bennett did not understand, the expedients he could no longer see.  It was either Lloyd or Ferriss.  He must choose between them.

Bennett went to the door of the room, closed it and leaned against it.

“No,” he said.