The policemen saw no objection; in a few moments the thing was done, and they retired bowing, and the door closed on solitude and death.

Mike lay back in his chair reading the document.  The fumes of the whiskey he had drunk obscured his sense of purpose, and he allowed his thoughts to wander; his eyes closed and he dozed, his head leaned a little on one side.  He dreamed, or rather he thought, for it was hardly sleep, of the dear good women who had loved him; and he mused over his folly in not taking one to wife and accepting life in its plain naturalness.

Then as sleep deepened the dream changed, becoming hyperbolical and fantastic, until he saw himself descending into hell.  The numerous women he had betrayed awaited him and pursued him with blazing lamps of intense and blinding electric fire.  And he fled from the light, seeking darkness like some nocturnal animal.  His head was leaned slightly on one side, the thin, weary face lying in the shadow of the chair, and the hair that fell thickly on the moist forehead.  As he dreamed the sky grew ghastly as the dead.  The night crouched as if in terror along the edges of the river, beneath the bridges and among the masonry and the barges aground, and in the ebbing water a lurid reflection trailed ominously.  And as the day ascended, the lamps dwindled from red to white, and beyond the dark night of the river, spires appeared upon faint roseate gray.

Then, as the sparrows commenced their shrilling in the garden, another veil was lifted, and angles and shapes on the warehouses appeared, and boats laden with newly-cut planks; then the lights that seemed to lead along the river turned short over the iron girders, and in white whiffs a train sped across the bridge.  The clouds lifted and cleared away, changing from dark gray to undecided purple, and in the blank silver of the east, the spaces flushed, and the dawn appeared in her first veil of rose.  And as if the light had penetrated and moved the brain, the lips murmured—­

“False fascination in which we are blinded.  Night! shelter and save me from the day, and in thy opiate arms bear me across the world.”

He turned uneasily as if he were about to awake, and then his eyes opened and he gazed on the spectral pallor of the dawn in the windows, his brain rousing from dreams slowly into comprehension of the change that had come.  Then collecting his thoughts he rose and stood facing the dawn.  He stood for a moment like one in combat, and then like one overwhelmed retreated through the folding doors, seeking his pistol.

“Another day begun!  Twelve more hours of consciousness and horror!  I must go!”

* * * * * *

None had heard the report of the pistol, and while the pomp of gold and crimson faded, and the sun rose into the blueness of morning, Mike lay still grasping the revolver, the blood flowing down his face, where he had fallen across the low bed, raised upon lions’ claws and hung with heavy curtains.  Receiving no answer, the servant had opened the door.  A look of horror passed over her face; she lifted his hand, let it fall, and burst into tears.