And Conroy tried to drown it in the draught of poisonous whisky that was left in his glass.
For that song had come on him—as it had come on Don— with the perfume of old days from the life he had lost. It had seized and shaken him, as remembered music will. He called for more drink, fearfully aware of the approach of that self-horror against which he had been fighting when Pittsey came to aid it—afraid of the weakness of vain regret, struggling up from the terrible despondency that was clutching at him. And the tune haunted him with the loyal voices of youths singing together, with the clink of social glasses at a college dinner drinking the Queen's health, with the far note of a military band across the sunny campus. He fought against it, working the muscles of his face. He drank more liquor desperately, his brain beginning to reel in the vertigo of drunkenness, with vivid pictures of home, the laugh of voices dearly familiar to him, the flash of smiling faces—as confused as in a dream, and like a dream stirring a torturing regret. He tried to listen to the woman singing "The Star-Spangled Banner," and for an instant he got it clear in his ears, but the riot of memory burst in again, and he fought it back, struggling with trembling lips and fingers that twitched on his glass.
He turned frantically to the bundle of papers on the table and tore off the wrapper and spread the first one eagerly. He began with the advertisements, but he could read only the forms of the words; they had no meaning and they marched crazily to the tune in his head. He turned to the pictures. And these were the old fond pictures of snow and sunset, of country homes,
