Toiling on through this, with a bowed head, was a female figure. He knew her; she was Rita, and the burden she, too, carried in her arms was the form of a child. The figures disappeared and a leaf floated down the stream; twenty-six in succession followed, and then he saw a man descending the mountains and coming forward, his eyes fixed on something beyond him. It was Edward. He looked in the same direction; there was a frail man toiling toward him through the deep sands in the hot sunlight. It was Gerald. And then the figures faded away. There memory ceased to record.
Whatever else was the experience of that eager mind as it wandered on through the mystery, and phantasmagoria has no place in science. He remembered in the morning up to one point only.
It was his last experience with the drug.
Edward drifted for several days upon the tide of the thoughts that came over him. He felt a singular disinclination to face the world again. He knew that as life goes he had acquitted himself manfully and that nothing remained undone that had been his duty to perform. He was sensible of a feeling of deep gratitude to the old general for his active and invaluable backing; without it he realized then that he would have been drawn into a pitfall and the opportunity for defense gone. He did not realize, however, how complete the public reaction had been until card after card had been left at Ilexhurst and the postman had deposited congratulatory missives by the score. One of these contained notice of his election to the club.
Satisfactory as was all this he put aside the social and public life into which he had been drawn, conscious that, while the affront to him had been resented and rendered harmless, he himself was as much in the dark as ever; that as a matter of fact he was without name and family, without right to avail himself of the generous offers laid at his door. Despite his splendid residence, his future, his talents and his prestige as a man of honor, he was--nobody; an accident of fate; a whim of an eccentric old man.
He should not involve any one else in the possibility of ruin. He should not let another share his danger. There could be no happiness with this mystery hanging over him.