more I dreamed of finality in change I deceived myself,
forgetting that God Himself cannot unmake the past or undo what is done.
A year had hardly gone by in this new apprenticeship to life, when at
moments of weariness or overstrain sharp doubts shot through me and were
gone again, like twinges of sudden pain recalling old disease to one who
has lulled himself with dreams of cure. The feeling of fellowship with
men grew weaker, and as it waned I began to shrink once more from my
kind. I still believed myself happy, but happiness seemed to need
constant affirmation, as though it could make no way in my favour
without display of token or credential to confirm its truth. There were
pauses in the clatter and jangle of life; the revolutions of the great
wheels sometimes slowed into silence; and as these interludes grew more
frequent, I caught myself repeating that I really was content. The faint
assurance given, I flung myself with devouring industry upon my allotted
task, trying to stifle the forebodings which prophesied against my
peace.

In one such pause my old self appeared before me again, like the face of
an ancient enemy looking in from the darkness; stealthy footfalls which
of late I had so often seemed to hear were now referred to their true
cause as we saw each other eye to eye. The old Adam had awakened and was
come for his inheritance; and the vision of him there across the pane
gazing in upon his own, seemed to arraign me for disowning a brother and
denying his indefeasible right. I recognized that with this familiar
form cold reason had returned to oust the hopes and emotions which had
usurped her office. My rush for freedom had ended, as such sallies often
do, in exhaustion, capture and despair; upon the thrill and thunder of
the charge followed the silence of the dungeon and the anguish of
stiffening wounds. The truth, so simply written that a child might have
spelled it, lay clear before me: I had left reformation till too late. I
was too old to change.

Even a few years before, I might have dashed out, like Marmion, from the
prison-fortress; but now the opportunity was past and the portcullis was
down. My character with all its faults was formed within me; and the
very years which I had passed in the wilderness, instead of averting the
danger, had set the final seal upon my fate, for when a man has reached
a certain point in life he is intractable to the reforming hand. But
though at last I knew myself