It never struck him how strangely inverted these thoughts were; what an utter negation of his waking thoughts, as they flashed through his mind while Garthorne was speaking. They seemed perfectly reasonable to him, and—so subtle was the miracle wrought by those two spoonsful of brandy—perfectly honest.
"Well, really, I don't see why I shouldn't," he said, taking up the decanter and pulling one of the two glasses which Garthorne had put on the table towards him. "I think I have got over that little weakness now. At any rate, for the last two years I haven't touched a drop of anything stronger than coffee, and I've sat here and in other men's rooms with fellows drinking in an atmosphere, as one might say, full of drink and tobacco smoke; and except for the smoking—of course I haven't dropped that—I've never felt the slightest inclination to join them, at least, after the first month or so—so I think I'm pretty safe now."
"Oh, of course you are!" said Garthorne. "As a matter of fact, you know, I never thought that there was anything serious in that idea of yours that you'd inherited the taint from some ancestor of yours. You got screwed one night for the first time in your life, and it gave you a fright. But the fact that you've been able to swear off absolutely for two years, is perfectly clear proof that the craving really existed only in your own imagination. If it had been real, you couldn't possibly have done it. Well, here's to us, old man, and to someone else who shall be nameless just now!"
Vane, in the recklessness of his new confidence, had mixed himself a pretty stiff dose. As he raised his glass with Garthorne's, something seemed to drag upon his arm, and something in his soul rose in revolt; but the old lurking poison was already aflame in his blood. He nodded to Garthorne and said:
"Thanks, old man. Here's to us and her!"
A few minutes before the words would have seemed blasphemy to him, now they sounded like an ordinary commonplace. He put the glass to his lips and emptied it in quick, hungry gulps.