looking out across the river, at the curving line of lights, at the
black, turgid waters, the slowly-moving hulk of a barge on its way down
the stream. It was a new thing, this, for him to have to accuse himself
of folly, of weakness. For the last few days he had moved in a mist of
uncertainty, setting his heel upon all reflection, avoiding every issue.
To-night he could escape those accusing thoughts no longer; to-night he
was more than ever bitter with himself. What folly was this which had
sprung up in his life--folly colossal, unimaginable, as unexpected as
though it had fallen a thunderbolt from the skies! What had happened to
change him so completely!

His thought traveled back to the boarding-house. It was there that the
thing had begun. Before that night upon the roof, the finger-posts which
he had set up with such care and deliberation along the road which led
towards his coveted goal, had seemed to him to point with unfaltering
directness towards everything in life worthy of consideration. To-night
they were only dreary phantasms, marking time across a miserable plain.
Perhaps, after all, there had been something in his nature, some rebel
thing, intolerable yet to be reckoned with, which had been first born of
that fateful curiosity of his. It had leapt up so suddenly, sprung with
such scanty notice into strenuous and insistent life. Yet what place had
it there? He must fight against it, root it out with both hands. What
was this world of intrigue, this criminal, undesirable world, to him?
His common sense forbade him altogether to dissociate Elizabeth from her
friends, from her surroundings. She was the secret of the pain which was
tearing at his heartstrings, of all the excitement, the joy, the passion
which had swept like a full flood across the level way of his life,
which had set him drifting among the unknown seas. Yet it was Beatrice
who had brought this upon him. If she had never left, if he had not
tasted the horrors of this new loneliness, he might have been able to
struggle on. He missed her, missed her diabolically. The other things,
marvelous though they were, had been more or less like a mirage.
This world of new emotions had spread like a silken mesh over all his
thoughts, over all his desires. Beatrice had been a tangible person,
restful, delightful, a real companion, his one resource against this
madness. And now she was gone, and he was powerless to get her back.
He turned his head, he looked