But that dear old lady had one consolation. She observed he had given
up his glasses--he had forgotten to bring them with him--and her
secret fear of grave optical troubles--that were being "kept" from
her---was alleviated.
Sometimes he had moods of intense regret for the folly of that
walk. One such came after the holidays, when the necessity of revising
the dates of the Schema brought before his mind, for the first time
quite clearly, the practical issue of this first struggle with all
those mysterious and powerful influences the spring-time sets
a-stirring. His dream of success and fame had been very real and dear
to him, and the realisation of the inevitable postponement of his long
anticipated matriculation, the doorway to all the other great things,
took him abruptly like an actual physical sensation in his chest.
He sprang up, pen in hand, in the midst of his corrections, and began
pacing up and down the room. "What a fool I have been!" he
cried. "What a fool I have been!"
He flung the pen on the floor and made a rush at an ill-drawn attempt
upon a girl's face that adorned the end of his room, the visible
witness of his slavery. He tore this down and sent the fragments of it
scattering....
"Fool!"
It was a relief--a definite abandonment.
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