nd
Pocket was not the boy to tell one if he knew it.

"That would be better than knowing what I have done," was what he said;
and in his exaltation he believed no less.

"You quite see that you are taking a step which must be final?"

"It is final--absolutely--so far as I am concerned."

And it was meant to be, in all good faith; the very fulness and fairness
of the doctor's warnings served but to strengthen that resolve. But
Baumgartner, as if to let well or ill alone, dropped the matter with a
clinching shrug; and presently he left his visitor, less wisely, to brood
on it alone.

Pocket was a dab at brooding! That is the worst of your conscientious
ass; he takes his decision like a man; he means to stick to it like a
sportsman; but he cannot help wondering whether he has decided for the
best, and what would have happened if he had decided otherwise, and what
his world will say about him as it is.

This one went much further in the unique stress of his extraordinary
position. He pictured his people dressing for dinner at home; he pictured
his form sitting down to private-work in his form-master's hall; there was
no end to his mental pictures, for they included one of himself on the
scaffold in the broad-arrows of the little old waxwork at Madame
Tassaud's! He could not help himself; his mind was crumbling with his
dreadful deed and its awful possibilities. Now his heart bled honestly
for the poor dead man, now for his own mother and sister, and now not less
freely for himself. He had been so innocent in the whole matter; he had
only been an innocent and rather sporting fool. And now one of these
lives was ended by his hand, and all the rest would be darkened for ever
after!

It was too great a burden for a boy to bear; but Pocket bore it far into
the long June twilight, scarcely stirring in the big soft chair, yet never
leaning back in it again. He sat hunched up as though once more battling
for breath, but curiously enough his bodily distress had flown before that
of the mind. Pocket would thankfully have changed them back again, for
his brain was as clear as his bronchial tubes, its capacity for suffering
undimmed by a single physical preoccupation. Between seven and eight the
young lady of the house came in with candles and a kind of high-tea on a
tray; she also brought a box of d'Auvergne Cigarettes and the latest
evening paper, which her uncle thought that Mr. Upton would like to see.
That was ho