characterized my earlier years. Perhaps it would be an exaggeration to
say that I actually began to speculate on the possible existence of a
realm where the soul might find a refuge from the buffetings of life,
from which the philosophy of prosperity was powerless to save it....

XXIV.

It was impossible, of course, that my friends should have failed to
perceive the state of disorganization I was in, and some of them at least
must have guessed its cause. Dickinson, on his return from Maine, at once
begged me to go away. I rather congratulated myself that Tom had chosen
these months for a long-delayed vacation in Canada. His passion for
fishing still persisted.

In spite of the fact I have noted, that I had lost a certain zest for
results, to keep busy seemed to be the only way to relieve my mind of an
otherwise intolerable pressure: and I worked sometimes far into the
evening. In the background of my thoughts lay the necessity of coming to
a decision on the question of the senatorship; several times Dickinson
and Gorse had spoken of it, and I was beginning to get letters from
influential men in other parts of the state. They seemed to take it for
granted that there was no question of my refusing. The time came when I
had grown able to consider the matter with a degree of calmness. What
struck me first, when I began to debate upon it, was that the senatorship
offered a new and possibly higher field for my energies, while at the
same time the office would be a logical continuation of a signal legal
career. I was now unable to deny that I no longer felt any exhilaration
at the prospect of future legal conquests similar to those of the past;
but once in the Senate, I might regain something of that intense
conviction of fighting for a just and sound cause with which Theodore
Wading had once animated me: fighting there, in the Capitol at
Washington, would be different; no stigma of personal gain attached to
it; it offered a nearer approach to the ideal I had once more begun to
seek, held out hopes of a renewal of my unity of mind. Mr. Watling had
declared that there was something to fight for; I had even glimpsed that
something, but I had to confess that for some years I had not been
consciously fighting for it. I needed something to fight for.

There was the necessity, however, of renewing my calculations. If
Hambleton Durrett should recover, even during the ensuing year, and if
Nancy relented it would not be possib