"No, no!" he cried within him, "Not that—not that!" Seeking to deafen his ears to a voice that at once charmed and terrified him, for it was the voice of a demon which possessed the allurements of an angel—a demon he reckoned he had long ago fast bound in chains from which it would never have the strength to arise. It was the voice that dwelt in the cup—the single cup—so innocent seeming, so really innocent for many, yet so ruinous for him; for, with all its promises of cheer and comfort it led—and he knew it—to disaster.
Bitterly he fought to drown the sounds of the voice, but the more he deafened his ears the more insistent, the clearer, the more alluring its tones became.
And it followed him everywhere. At every board where he was a guest the brimming cup stood beside his plate, at every turn of the street he was buttonholed by some friend old or new, with the invitation to join him in the "cup of kindness." At every evening party he found himself surrounded by bevies of charming young Hebes, who, as innocent as angels of any intention of doing him a wrong, implored him to propose them a toast.
How could he refuse them? Especially when acquiescence meant escape from this horrible, horrible soul-sickness, this weight that was bearing his spirits down—crushing them.
Therein lay the tempter's power. Not in appetite—he was no swine to swill for love of the draught. When he did yield he drained the cup scarce tasting its contents. But ah, the freedom from the sickness that tortured him, the weight that oppressed him! And ah, the exhilaration, physical and mental, the delightful exhilaration which put melancholy to flight, loosed his tongue and started the machinery of his brain—which robbed the past of regret and made the present and the future rosy!
It was in the promise of this exhilaration that the seductiveness of the dreaded tones lay.
Even his kindly old physician, diagnosing the pallor of his cheeks and melancholy in his eyes as "a touch of malaria," added a note of insistence to the voice, as he prescribed that panacea of the day, "a mint julep before breakfast."
Yet he still sternly and stoutly turned a deaf ear to the voice of the charmer, while dejection drew him deeper and deeper into its depths until one day he found he could not write. His pen seemed suddenly to have lost its power. He sat at his desk in the office of the Messenger with paper before him, with pens and ink at hand, but his brain refused to produce an idea, and for such vague half-thoughts as came to him, he could find no words to give expression.
He was seized upon by terror.
Had his gift of the gods deserted him? Better death than life without his gift! Without it the very ground under his feet seemed uncertain and unsafe!