Was Ferriss conscious during that last moment?  Did he know; would he, sometime, somewhere, know?  It could not be said.  Forever that must remain a mystery.  And, after all, had Bennett done right in keeping Lloyd from the sick-room?  Now that all was over, now that the whole fearful tragedy could be judged somewhat calmly and in the light of reason, the little stealthy doubt began to insinuate itself.

At first he had turned from it, raging and furious, stamping upon it as upon an intruding reptile.  The rough-hewn, simple-natured man, with his arrogant and vast self-confidence, his blind, unshaken belief in the wisdom of his own decisions, had never in his life before been willing to admit that he could be mistaken, that it was possible for him to resolve upon a false line of action.  He had always been right.  But now a change had come.  A woman had entangled herself in the workings of his world, the world that hitherto had been only a world of men for him—­and now he faltered, now he questioned himself, now he scrutinised his motives, now the simple became complicated, the straight crooked, right mingled with wrong, bitter with sweet, falseness with truth.

He who had faith in himself to remove mountains, he who could drive his fellow-men as a herder drives his sheep, he who had forced the vast grip of the Ice, had, with a battering ram’s force, crushed his way through those terrible walls, shattered and breached and broken down the barriers, now in this situation involving a woman—­had he failed?  Had he weakened?  And bigger, stronger, and more persistently doubt intruded itself into his mind.

Hitherto Bennett’s only salvation from absolute despair had been the firm consciousness of his own rectitude.  In that lay his only comfort, his only hope, his one, strong-built fabric of defence.  If that was undermined, if that was eaten away, what was there left for him?  Carefully, painfully, and with such minuteness as he could command, he went over the whole affair from beginning to end, forcing his unwilling mind—­so unaccustomed to such work—­to weigh each chance, to gauge each opportunity.  If this were so, if that had been done, then would such results have followed?  Suppose he had not interfered, suppose he had stood aside, would Lloyd have run such danger, after all, and would Ferriss at this time have been alive, and perhaps recovering?  Had he, Bennett, been absolutely mad; had he been blind and deaf to reason; had he acted the part of a brute—­a purblind, stupid, and unutterably selfish brute—­thinking chiefly of himself, after all, crushing the woman who was so dear to him, sacrificing the life of the man he loved, blundering in there, besotted and ignorant, acting the bully’s part, unnecessarily frightened, cowardly where he imagined himself brave; weak, contemptibly weak, where he imagined himself strong?  Might it not have been avoided if he had been even merely reasonable, as, in like case, an ordinary man would have been?  He, who prided himself upon the promptness and soundness of his judgment in great crises, had lost his head and all power of self-control in this greatest crisis of all.