“‘O let me not be mad, not mad, sweet heavens!’

“Prayer!  There was another thought.  How could I pray?  For I was a sceptic.  My father had educated me with broadly materialistic views; he himself was a follower of Voltaire, and with his finite rod he took the measure of Divinity, greatly to his own satisfaction.  He was a good man, too, and he died with exemplary calmness in the absolute certainty of there being nothing in his composition but dust, to which he was as bound to return.  He had not a shred of belief in anything but what he called the Universal Law of Necessity; perhaps this was why all his pictures lacked inspiration.  I accepted his theories without thinking much about them, and I had managed to live respectably without any religious belief.  But now—­ now with the horrible phantom of madness rising before me—­my firm nerves quailed.  I tried, I longed to pray.  Yet to whom?  To what?  To the Universal Law of Necessity?  In that there could be no hearing or answering of human petitions.  I meditated on this with a kind of sombre ferocity.  Who portioned out this Law of Necessity?  What brutal Code compels us to be born, to live, to suffer, and to die without recompense or reason?  Why should this Universe be an ever-circling Wheel of Torture?  Then a fresh impetus came to me.  I rose from my recumbent posture and stood erect; I trembled no more.  A curious sensation of defiant amusement possessed me so violently that I laughed aloud.  Such a laugh, too!  I recoiled from the sound, as from a blow, with a shudder.  It was the laugh of—­a madman!  I thought no more; I was resolved.  I would fulfil the grim Law of Necessity to its letter.  If Necessity caused my birth, it also demanded my death.  Necessity could not force me to live against my will.  Better eternal nothingness than madness.  Slowly and deliberately I took from my vest a Milanese dagger of thin sharp steel—­one that I always carried with me as a means of self-defence —­I drew it from its sheath, and looked at the fine edge glittering coldly in the pallid moon-rays.  I kissed it joyously; it was my final remedy!  I poised it aloft with firm fingers—­another instant and it would have been buried deep in my heart, when I felt a powerful grasp on my wrist, and a strong arm struggling with mine forced the dagger from my hand.  Savagely angry at being thus foiled in my desperate intent, I staggered back a few paces and sullenly stared at my rescuer.  He was a tall man, clad in a dark overcoat bordered with fur; he looked like a wealthy Englishman or American travelling for pleasure.  His features were fine and commanding; his eyes gleamed with a gentle disdain as he coolly met my resentful gaze.  When he spoke his voice was rich and mellifluous, though his accents had a touch in them of grave scorn.