igorous mind expanded--his body was
never very robust--the reactions from the diversions with which his life
was surrounded grew blacker and more desperate. In his moments of
reflection he saw clearly where his path was leading him. There was
much in him, though never yet called out, of the native force of his
stern old grandfather who had begun life a wage labourer, and in his
moments of revolt, as men who dissipate crave that which is cold or
bitter or sour, Nort had moments of intense longing for something hard,
knotty, difficult, for hunger, cold, privation. Without knowing it, he
was groping for reality.

And here he was in Hempfield, leaning against the fence of Mrs. Barrow's
garden, desperately low in his spirits, at one moment wondering why he
had come away, at the next feeling wretchedly that somehow this was his
last chance. Fool! fool! His whole being loathed the discomfort of his
pampered body, and yet he felt that if he gave up now he might never
again have the courage to revolt.

[Illustration: _What a thing is youth! That sunny morning in Hempfield
Nort thought that he was drinking the uttermost dregs of life--they were
pretty bitter--and yet, somehow he was able to stand a little aside and
enjoy it all_]

What a thing is youth! That sunny morning in Hempfield Nort thought that
he was drinking the uttermost dregs of life--they _were_ pretty
bitter--and yet, somehow, he was able to stand a little aside and enjoy
it all. Black as it was, it had yet the mystical quality of a new
adventure, new possibilities. At one moment Nort was hating himself,
hating his whole life, hating the town in which fate had dropped him,
with all the passion of a naturally robust nature; and at the next he
was peeping around the corner of the next adventure to see what he might
see. The suffering of youth with honey in its mouth!

Oh, to be twenty-four! To feel that one has sounded all the chords of
life, known every bitterness, to have become entirely disillusioned,
wholly cynical, utterly reckless--and not to know that life and illusion
have only just begun!

The hard, bristling, painful thing in his insides which Nort couldn't
identify, wrongly attributing it to certain things he had been eating
and drinking now for several days past, was in fact his soul.

How I love to think of Nort at that moment, that wonderful, fertile,
despondent, hopeful, passionate moment. How I love to think of him, who
is now so dear a friend,