dred. Of what stuff was he made, that he could
lightly contemplate turning his back on prizes such as these?

Even as he told them off, however, the old sense of hollowness was upon
him again. His life there reminded him of a gaudy drop-scene, let down
before an empty stage; a painted sham, with darkness and vacuity
behind. At bottom, none of these distinctions and successes meant
anything to him; not a scrap of mental pabulum could be got from them:
rather would he have chosen to be poor and a nobody among people whose
thoughts flew to meet his half-way. And there was also another side to
it. Stingy though the years had been of intellectual grist, they had
not scrupled to rob him of many an essential by which he set store. His
old faculty--for good or evil--of swift decision, for instance. It was
lost to him now; as witness his present miserable vacillation. It had
gone off arm-in-arm with his health; physically he was but a ghost of
the man he had once been. But the bitterest grudge he bore the life was
for the shipwreck it had made of his early ideals. He remembered the
pure joy, the lofty sentiments with which he had returned to medicine.
Bah!--there had been no room for any sentimental nonsense of that kind
here. He had long since ceased to follow his profession
disinterestedly; the years had made a hack of him--a skilled hack, of
course--but just a hack. He had had no time for study; all his strength
had gone in keeping his income up to a certain figure; lest the wife
should be less well dressed and equipped than her neighbours; or
patients fight shy of him; or his confreres wag their tongues.--Oh! he
had adapted himself supremely well to the standards of this Australia,
so-called Felix. And he must not complain if, in so doing, he had been
stripped, not only of his rosy dreams, but also of that spiritual force
on which he could once have drawn at will. Like a fool he had believed
it possible to serve mammon with impunity, and for as long as it suited
him. He knew better now. At this moment he was undergoing the
sensations of one who, having taken shelter in what he thinks a light
and flimsy structure, finds that it is built of the solidest stone.
Worse still: that he has been walled up inside.

And even suppose he COULD pull himself together for the effort
required, how justify his action in the eyes of the world? His motives
would be double-dutch to the hard-headed crew around him; nor would any
go to the troub