nt--helped along by novelty--kept him going. Of course, the moment
had to come sooner or later; but it seems a little hard that he was
obliged to face it in that peculiarly dreary clarity of mind that falls
upon the sleepless an hour or two before the dawn.

For, as he looked at it all now, he saw it as an outsider would see it,
no longer from the point of view of his own personality. He perceived a
young man, of excellent abilities and prospects, sacrificing these
things for an idea that fell to pieces the instant it was touched. He
touched it now with a critical finger, and it did so fall to pieces;
there was, obviously, nothing in it at all. It was an impulse of silly
pride, of obstinacy, of the sort of romance that effects nothing. There
was Merefield waiting for him--for he knew perfectly well that terms
could be arranged; there was all that leisureliness and comfort and
distinction in which he had been brought up and which he knew well how
to use; there was Jenny; there was his dog, his horse ... there was, in
fact, everything for which Merefield stood. He saw it all now,
visualized and clear in the dark; and he had exchanged all
this--well--for this room, and the Major's company, and back-breaking
toil.... And for no reason.

So he regarded all this for a good long while; with his eyes closed,
with the darkness round him, with every detail visible and insistent,
seen as in the cold light of morning before colors reassert themselves
and reconcile all into a reasonable whole....

"... I must really go to sleep!" said Frank to himself, and screwed up
his eyes tight.

There came, of course, a reaction presently, and he turned to his
religion. He groped for his rosary under his pillow, placed before him
(according to the instructions given in the little books) the "Mystery
of the Annunciation to Mary," and began the "Our Father." ... Half-way
through it he began all over again to think about Cambridge, and
Merefield and Jack Kirkby, and the auction in his own rooms, and his
last dinner-party and the design on the menu-cards, and what a fool he
was; and when he became conscious of the rosary again he found that he
held in his fingers the last bead but three in the fifth decade. He had
repeated four and a half decades without even the faintest semblance of
attention. He finished them hopelessly, and then savagely thrust the
string of beads under his pillow again; turned over once more,
rearranged his feet, wished th