After the first few panting breaths that came to him he had stood leaning on his gun, looking down at that beautiful thing which he had deprived of life.
"What am I that I should have done this thing ?" he had asked himself on that evening, while the blacks had yelled around him like devils.
"What am I that I should do this thing ?" was his cry now, as the voice of many demons sounded in his ears.
What was he that he should rejoice at receiving that letter from the woman over whose head the waters were closing?
He ordered his horse and, mounting it, rode to where he could put it to the gallop.

So men try to leave behind them the sneering demons of conscience and self-reproach.

Some of them succeed in doing so, but find the pair waiting for them on their own doorstep.

Herbert Courtland galloped his horse intermittently for an hour or two, and then rode leisurely back to his rooms.

He felt that he had got the better of those two enemies of his who had been irritating him.