"No, no, I don't think you will, Vane. Well, good-night. Put the spirits and cigars away, will you?"
"Good-night, dad! I hope you'll be all right in the morning."
As the door closed behind his father, Vane went to the table on which the open spirit-stand stood. His father had forgotten to replace the stopper in the whiskey decanter, and the aroma of the ripe old spirit rose to his nostrils. Instantly a subtle fire seemed to spread through his veins and mount up to his brain. The mad craving that he had felt outside the Criterion came back upon him with tenfold force. He raised the decanter to his nostrils and inhaled a long breath of the subtle, vaporous poison. He looked around the room with burning eyes.
He was alone. There was no guardian angel near him now. Moved by some impulse other than his own will, he took his father's glass and poured out half a tumblerful of whiskey, filled it with soda water from the syphon, and drank it down with quick feverish gulps. Then he set the glass on the table and went and looked at himself in an Indian mirror over the mantel-piece. The pupils of his eyes seemed twice their size, and in each a yellow flame was leaping and dancing.
His face seemed transfigured. It was rather that of a handsome satyr than of an English lad of twenty. The lips were curled in a scornful sneer, the nostrils were dilated and the eyebrows arched. He laughed at himself—a laugh that startled him, even then. He went back to the table and poured out more whiskey, smelt it and drank it down raw.
His blood was liquid flame by this time. He was no longer in the room. The walls and ceiling had vanished, and all round him vivid pictures were flitting, pictures of things that he had seen during the day, flickering and flashing like those of the Biograph; but Carol's face and soft brown eyes seemed somehow to be in the middle of all of them.
He dropped into a chair and felt about half blindly for the decanter. When he got hold of it he emptied it partly into the glass and partly over the table-cloth. He lifted the glass to his lips with both hands, drained it half chokingly, and then the pictures stopped moving and grew dim. A black pall of darkness seemed to come down and crush him to the earth. He lurched out of the chair on to the hearth-rug, rolled on to his back, and lay there motionless with arms outstretched.
An hour later the door opened and Sir Arthur came in in his dressing gown. A glance at the empty decanter and the prostrate figure on the hearth-rug, showed him the calamity that had fallen upon his house. He staggered forward and dropped on his knees beside Vane, crying in a weak, broken voice:
"My boy, my boy! Good God! what have I done? Why didn't I tell him at once?"