w that sorrowful example.'

'Oh,' said Paul, 'have no fear there; my temptation does not lie in that
direction.'

'My dear young friend,' said Laurent, 'no man until he is tempted knows
in what direction his temptation lies.'

They shook hands again through the open window and then parted
definitely for the night.

Paul sat long in the silence, not thinking of anything in particular or
conscious of any particular emotion. The cafe on the opposite side of
the _place_ had long since closed. When Laurent's footsteps had faded
out of hearing there was no sound abroad for which it was not necessary
to listen, except when a distant dog barked now and then, or the slow
rumble of a far-off train came once into hearing and disappeared in the
valley with which the railway clove the low hills beyond Janenne. The
dark air of night flowed in through the open window, cool and sweet,
bringing with it the familiar odours of the pine plantations in which
the countryside abounded. Paul smoked pipe after pipe, and he knew very
well that if anybody had been there to look at him, he would have seemed
unmoved, and yet he seemed to himself more than once to be playing the
mountebank with his own trouble, as when, for instance, the lines came
into his mind:

'Break, thou deep vase of chilling tears,
That grief has shaken into frost'

But all the while there was a slow anguish rising within him or around
him. It seemed to reach his breast quite suddenly and almost to stop
the beating of his heart. Then it ebbed away again, and he found himself
crooning unemotionally, 'For years--a measureless ill--for ever, for
ever!' The pain came back, and once more ebbed away. What was it? he
asked in the self-torturing way which besets the analyst of his own
nature. Self-pity, he answered. Self-pity, pure and simple. He, Paul
Armstrong, furnished with heart and brains and social powers, with
fortune at hand, and fame to be had for the beckoning, had slid into
this sickening quagmire thus early in his life's pilgrimage, and had
come to an arrest there.

Then, out of this profound despondency he arose to a sudden resolution.
This was not a matter to be despaired of. It was a thing to fight
against, an ill not to be endured, but to be cured. Laurent would help,
but the main share of the conflict must fall upon himself. Almost for
the first time in his life he was conscious of a clear and definite call
to manhood. He was entered for a real st