“Oh!” he exclaimed, in a trembling breath.  “Oh!” The sound seemed drawn from him by compulsion.

Its uncanny tone chilled Loder anew.  “Wake up, man!” he said, suddenly.  “Wake up!  It’s I—­Loder.”

Again the other shuddered; then he turned quickly and nervously.  “Loder?” he said, doubtfully.  “Loder?” Then his face changed.  “Good God!” he exclaimed, “what a relief!”

The words were so intense, so spontaneous and unexpected, that Loder took a step back.

Chilcote laughed discordantly, and lifted a shaky hand to protect his eyes from the light.

“It’s—­it’s all right, Loder!  It’s all right!  It’s only that I—­that I had a beastly dream.  But, for Heaven’s sake, shut that window!” He shivered involuntarily and pushed the lock of damp hair from his forehead with a weak touch of his old irritability.

In silence Loder moved back to the window and shut it.  He was affected more than he would own even to himself by the obvious change in Chilcote.  He had seen him moody, restless, nervously excited; but never before had he seen him entirely demoralized.  With a dull feeling of impotence and disgust he stood by the closed window, looking unseeingly at the roofs of the opposite houses.

But Chilcote had followed his movements restlessly; and now, as he watched him, a flicker of excitement crossed his face.  “God!  Loder,” he said, again, “’twas a relief to see you!  I dreamed I was in hell—­a horrible hell, worse than the one they preach about.”

He laughed to reassure himself, but his voice shook pitiably.

Loder, who had come to fight, stood silent and inert.

“It was horrible—­beastly,” Chilcote went on.  “There was no fire and brimstone, but there was something worse.  It was a great ironic scheme of punishment by which every man was chained to his own vice—­by which the thing he had gone to pieces over, instead of being denied him, was made compulsory.  You can’t imagine it.”  He shivered nervously and his voice rose.  “Fancy being satiated beyond the limit of satiety, being driven and dogged by the thing you had run after all your life!”

He paused excitedly, and in the pause Loder found resolution.  He shut his ears to the panic in Chilcote’s voice, he closed his consciousness to the sight of his shaken face.  With a surge of determination he rallied his theories.  After all, he had himself and his own interests to claim his thought.  At the moment Chilcote was a wreck, with no desire towards rehabilitation; but there was no guarantee that in an hour or two he might not have regained control over himself, and with it the inclination that had prompted his letter of the day before.  No; he had himself to look to.  The survival of the fittest was the true, the only principle.  Chilcote had had intellect, education, opportunity, and Chilcote had deliberately cast them aside.  Fortifying himself in the knowledge, he turned from the window and moved slowly back to the bed.