ntable conclusion.

The beginning of it was at Wampsocket Springs, three years ago last
summer. I suppose most unmarried men who have reached, or passed, the
age of thirty--and I was then thirty-three--experience a milder return
of their adolescent warmth, a kind of fainter second spring, since the
first has not fulfilled its promise. Of course, I wasn't clearly
conscious of this at the time: who is? But I had had my youthful
passion and my tragic disappointment, as you know: I had looked far
enough into what Thackeray used to call the cryptic mysteries to save
me from the Scylla of dissipation, and yet preserved enough of natural
nature to keep me out of the Pharisaic Charyb-dis. My devotion to my
legal studies had already brought me a mild distinction; the paternal
legacy was a good nest-egg for the incubation of wealth--in short, I
was a fair, respectable "party," desirable to the humbler mammas, and
not to be despised by the haughty exclusives.

The fashionable hotel at the Springs holds three hundred, and it was
packed. I had meant to lounge there for a fortnight and then finish my
holidays at Long Branch; but eighty, at least, out of the three hundred
were young and moved lightly in muslin. With my years and experience I
felt so safe that to walk, talk, or dance with them became simply a
luxury, such as I had never--at least so freely--possessed before. My
name and standing, known to some families, were agreeably exaggerated
to the others, and I enjoyed that supreme satisfaction which a man
always feels when he discovers, or imagines, that he is popular in
society. There is a kind of premonitory apology implied in my saying
this, I am aware. You must remember that I am culprit, and culprit's
counsel, at the same time.

You have never been at Wampsocket? Well, the hills sweep around in a
crescent, on the northern side, and four or five radiating glens,
descending from them, unite just above the village. The central one,
leading to a waterfall (called "Minne-hehe" by the irreverent young
people, because there is so little of it), is the fashionable drive and
promenade; but the second ravine on the left, steep, crooked, and
cumbered with bowlders which have tumbled from somewhere and lodged in
the most extraordinary groupings, became my favorite walk of a morning.
There was a footpath in it, well-trodden at first, but gradually fading
out as it became more like a ladder than a path, and I soon discovered
that no o