The doubt came back to him again and again.  Trample it, stifle it, dash it from him as he would, each time it returned a little stronger, a little larger, a little more insistent.  Perhaps, after all, he had made a mistake; perhaps, after all, Lloyd ran no great danger; perhaps, after all, Ferriss might now have been alive.  All at once Bennett seemed to be sure of this.

Then it became terrible.  Alone there, in the darkness and in the night, Bennett went down into the pit.  Abruptly he seemed to come to himself—­to realise what he had done, as if rousing from a nightmare.  Remorse, horror, self-reproach, the anguish of bereavement, the infinite regret of things that never were to be again, the bitterness of a vanished love, self-contempt too abject for expression, the heart-breaking grief of the dreadful might-have-been, one by one, he knew them all.  One by one, like the slow accumulation of gigantic burdens, the consequences of his folly descended upon him, heavier, more intolerably, more inexorably fixed with every succeeding moment, while the light of truth and reason searched every corner of his mind, and his doubt grew and hardened into certainty.

If only Bennett could have believed that, in spite of what had happened, Lloyd yet loved him, he could have found some ray of light in the darkness wherein he groped, some saving strength to bear the weight of his remorse and sorrow.  But now, just in proportion as he saw clearer and truer he saw that he must look for no help in that direction.  Being what Lloyd was, it was impossible for her, even though she wished it, to love him now—­love the man who had broken her!  The thought was preposterous.  He remembered clearly that she had warned him of just this.  No, that, too, the one sweetness of his rugged life, he must put from him as well—­had already, and of his own accord, put from him.

How go on?  Of what use now was ambition, endeavour, and the striving to attain great ends?  The thread of his life was snapped; his friend was dead, and the love of the one woman of his world.  For both he was to blame.  Of what avail was it now to continue his work?

Ferriss was dead.  Who now would stand at his side when the darkness thickened on ahead and obstacles drew across the path and Death overhead hung poised and menacing?

Lloyd’s love for him was dead.  Who now to bid him godspeed as his vessel’s prow swung northward and the water whitened in her wake?  Who now to wait behind when the great fight was dared again, to wait behind and watch for his home-coming; and when the mighty hope had been achieved, the goal of all the centuries attained, who now to send that first and dearest welcome out to him when the returning ship showed over the horizon’s rim, flagged from her decks to her crosstrees in all the royal blazonry of an immortal triumph?