ey of
spiritual adventuring, of intellectual excitement, in which the prize
striven for was not money or anything to do with money. Far away,
thousands of miles off, luckier men than he were in the thick of it.
He, of his own free will, had cut himself adrift, and now it was too
late.

But was it? Had the time irretrievably gone by? The ancient idea of
escape, long dormant, suddenly reawoke in him with a new force. And,
once stirring, it was not to be silenced, but went on sounding like a
ground-tone through all he did. At first he shut his ears to it, to
dally with side issues. For example, he worried the question why the
breaking-point should only now have been reached and not six months, a
year ago. It was quibbling to lay the whole blame on Ocock's shoulders.
The real cause went deeper, was of older growth. And driving his mind
back over the past, he believed he could pin his present loss of grip
to that fatal day on which he learnt that his best friend had betrayed
him. Things like that gave you a crack that would not mend. He had been
rendered suspicious where he had once been credulous; prone to see evil
where no evil was. For, deceived by Purdy, in whom could he trust? Of a
surety not in the pushful set of jobbers and tricksters he was
condemned to live amongst. No discoveries he might make about them
would surprise him.--And once more the old impotent anger with himself
broke forth, that he should ever have let himself take root in such
detestable surroundings.

Why not shake the dust of the country off his feet?--From this direct
attack he recoiled, casting up his hands as if against the evil eye.
What next? But exclaim as he might, now that the idea had put on words,
it was by no means so simple to fend it off as when it had been a mere
vague humming at the back of his mind. It seized him; swept his brain
bare of other thoughts. He began to look worn. And never more so than
when he imagined himself taking the bull by the horns and asking Mary's
approval of his wild-goose scheme. He could picture her face, when she
heard that he planned throwing up his fine position and decamping on
nothing a year. The vision was a cold douche to his folly. No, no! it
would not do. You could not accustom a woman to ease and luxury and
then, when you felt YOU had had enough and would welcome a return to
Spartan simplicity, to an austere clarity of living, expect her to be
prepared, at the word, to step back into poverty. One