ABSTRACT
AT this time Vansittart well knew that his life was not worth an hour’s purchase. The gloom on his brow, the unrest of the man’s life, which the Princesse Marchesi had noted in him, was not all caused by the pain of his hopeless love. He lived on a volcano. But to live on a volcano is intolerable. It is to be haunted by a Shadow that no man can bear. He knew that as he walked the streets, or drove, or lay in bed at midnight the blow might fall. The Sword hung over him. And his annoyance was caused by the fact that he could not see the Sword He did not know where or when, or how manifold, or in what form, was the Peril which tracked him. But he was sure of the Peril itself. In consultation with his colleagues, at the opera, at a soirée, in his library, he felt the proximity of the Spectre.
