Yesterday he had been just at the top of the hill.

The key in his fingers was turning in the lock which would make safe the securities of his life and career, when it snapped, and the world grew dark as the black curtain fell and shut out the lighted room from the wayfarer in the gloom.

Then, it was, came the opaque blackness which could be felt, and his voice calling in despair: "Blind! I am blind!" He did not know that he had taken an opiate, that his friend had mercifully atrophied his rebellious nerves.

These visions he was seeing were terribly true, but they somehow gave him no physical torture.

It was as though one saw an operation performed upon one's body with the nerves stilled and deadened by ether.