the fathomless Night.

PAUL H. HAYNE.

THROUGH WINDING WAYS.

CHAPTER XI.

No boy with the ordinary sources of pleasurable activity open to him can
realize the gloom and despondency I felt at times when cut off from the
healthful energies of other men. I was no longer morbid; I would not allow
myself to feel that my infirmity was a bar to the enjoyment of life; yet,
all the same, I dreaded society and shrank from the fresh conviction of
inferiority I was certain to experience in going out with Harry, who was
strongest where I was so weak. He was the most delightful fellow in
society that I have ever seen. He comprehended everybody and everything
with the grasp of an ardent and sympathetic spirit. He was happy in
possessing a natural facility for pleasing women of all ages and all
degrees. The professors' wives and daughters were all in love with him:
his rooms were full of the work of white hands. He had as many
smoking-caps as there are days in the week, and might have fitted out the
entire class with slippers. But nobody wondered: he was so handsome and
tall and godlike that every woman believed in him, and felt the charm of
his grand manner, which put romance and chivalry into the act of helping
her over a puddle.

I probably felt more reverence for the meanest woman we met in the street
than he did for his grandest friend in society; but, nevertheless, his
splendid courtesy illuminated the slightest social duty, whereas I stood
rayless beside him. He had been unlucky where his mother was concerned:
she was a weak woman to begin with, had never loved her husband, and had
left him for another man, whom she married after the disgrace and sorrow
she caused had killed her boy's father. Harry never spoke of this, but,
perhaps unconsciously to himself, it had changed the feeling he might have
had toward women into something defiant and cynical; and the attraction
they possessed for him was in danger of becoming debased, since he admired
them, old and young, with too scanty a respect, and believed too little in
the worth of any emotion they awoke in his heart or mind.

It had been a matter of discussion between Harry and myself whether we
should attend Mrs. Dwight's party. But Jack had peremptory orders to bring
us both, and of course when the evening came we went. I had not seen
Georgy Lenox since the visit she had paid me a few months after my
accident, and I had often told myself that I wished never to see