unted to pleasure--as he
closed his Sophocles some hour or so after hall, having just
finished the last of the Greek plays which he meant to take in
for his first examination. He leaned back in his chair and sat
for a few minutes, letting his thoughts follow their own bent.
They soon took to going wrong, and he jumped up in fear lest he
should be drifting back into the black stormy sea, in the trough
of which he had been laboring so lately, and which he felt he was
by no means clear of yet. At first he caught up his cap and gown
as though he were going out. There was a wine party at one of his
acquaintance's rooms; or he could go and smoke a cigar in the
pool room, or at any one of a dozen other places. On second
thoughts, however, he threw his academicals back on to the sofa
and went to his book-case. The reading had paid so well that
evening that he resolved to go on with it. He had no particular
object in selecting one book more than another, and so took down
carelessly the first that came to hand.

It happened to be a volume of Plato, and opened of its own accord
at the "Apology." He glanced at a few lines. What a flood of
memories they called up! This was almost the last book he had
read at school; and teacher, and friends, and lofty oak-shelved
library stood out before him at once. Then the blunders that he
himself and others had made rushed through his mind, and he
almost burst into a laugh as he wheeled his chair round to the
window, and began reading where he had opened, encouraging every
thought of the old times when he first read that marvellous
defense, and throwing himself back into them with all his might.
And still, as he read, forgotten words of wise comment, and
strange thoughts of wonder and longing, came back to him. The
great truth which he had been led to the brink of in those early
days rose in all its awe and all its attractiveness before him.
He leaned back in his chair, and gave himself up to his thought;
and how strangely that thought bore on the struggle which had
been raging in him of late; how an answer seemed to be trembling
to come out of it to all the cries, now defiant, now plaintive,
which had gone up out of his heart in this time of trouble! For
his thought was of that spirit, distinct from himself, and yet
communing with his inmost soul, always dwelling in him, knowing
him better than he knew himself, never misleading him, always
leading him to light and truth, of which the old phi