To every coward safety, and afterwards his evil hour.

SLEEP, that fickle courtier of our hours of ease, had deserted Hugh. When the last hour of the last day was over, and the dawn which he had bound himself in honour not to see found him sitting alone in his room, where he had sat all night, horror fell upon him at what he had done. Now that its mire was upon him he saw by how foul, by how dastardly a path he had escaped.

“To every coward safety, and afterwards his evil hour.” Hugh’s evil hour had come. But was he a coward? Men not braver than he have earned the Victoria Cross, have given up their lives freely for others. Hugh had it in him to do as well as any man in hot blood, but not in cold. That was where Lord Newhaven had the advantage of him. He had been overmatched from the first. The strain without had been greater than the power of resistance within. As the light grew, Hugh tasted of that cup which God holds to no man’s lips — remorse. Would the cup of death which he had pushed aside have been more bitter?

He took up his life like a thief. Was it not stolen? He could not bear his rooms. He could not bear the crowded streets. He could not bear the parks. He wandered aimlessly from one to the other, driven out of each in turn, consumed by the smouldering flame of his self-contempt. Scorn seemed written on the faces of the passers-by. As the day waned he found himself once again for the twentieth time in the park, pacing in “the dim persistent rain,” which had been falling all day.

But he could not get away from the distant roar of the traffic. He heard it everywhere, like the Niagara which he had indeed escaped, but the sound of which would be in his ears till he died. He drew nearer and nearer to the traffic, and stood still in the rain listening to it intently. Might one of those thousand wheels be even now bringing his enemy towards him, to force him to keep his unspoken word. Hugh had not realised that his worst enemy was he who stood with him in the rain.

The forlorn London trees, black and bare, seemed to listen too, and to cling closer to their parks and grass, as if they dimly foresaw the inevitable time coming when they too should toil, and hate, and suffer, as they saw on all sides those stunted uprooted figures toil and suffer, which had once been trees like themselves. “We shall come to it,” they seemed to say, shivering in all their branches, as they peered through the iron rails at the stream of human life, much as man peers at a passing funeral.

The early night drove Hugh back to the house. He found a note from a man who had rooms above him enclosing a theatre ticket, which at the last moment he had been prevented using. He instantly clutched at the idea of escaping from himself for a few hours at least. He hastily changed his wet clothes, ate the food that had been prepared for him, and hurried out once more.

The play was “Julius C?sar,” at Her Majesty’s. He had seen it several times, but to-night it appealed to him as it had never done before. He hardly noticed the other actors. His whole interest centred in the awful figure of Cassius, splendid in its unswerving deathless passion of a great hate and a great love. His eyes never left the ruthless figure as it stood in silence with its unflinching eyes upon its victim. Had not Lord Newhaven thus watched him, Hugh, ready to strike when the hour came.

The moment of the murder was approaching. Hugh held his breath. Cassius knelt with the rest before C?sar. Hugh saw his hand seek the handle of his sword, saw the end of the sheath tilt upwards under his robe as the blade slipped out of it. Then came the sudden outburst of animal ferocity long held in leash, of stab on stab, the self-recovery, the cold stare at the dead figure with Cassius’ foot upon its breast.

For a moment the scene vanished. Hugh saw again the quiet study with its electric reading-lamp, the pistols over the mantelpiece, the tiger glint in Lord Newhaven’s eyes. He was like Cassius. He, too, had been ready to risk life, everything in the prosecution of his hate.

“He shall never stand looking down on my body,” said Hugh to himself, “with his cursed foot upon me.” And he realised that if he had been a worthier antagonist, that also might have been. The play dealt with men. Cassius and Lord Newhaven were men. But what was he?

The fear of death leading the love of life by the hand took with shame a lower seat. Hugh saw them at last in their proper places. If he could have died then he would have died cheerfully, gladly, as he saw Cassius die by his own hand, counting death the little thing it is. Afterwards, as he stood in the crowd near the door, where the rain was delaying the egress, he saw suddenly Lord Newhaven’s face watching him. His heart leapt. “He has come to make me keep my word,” he said to himself, the exaltation of the play still upon him. “I will not avoid him. Let him do it,” and he pressed forward towards him.

Lord Newhaven looked fixedly at him for a moment, and then disappeared.

“He will follow me and stab me in the back,” said Hugh. “I will walk home by the street where the pavement is up, an............