Such a night insulated the dark
moods which possessed him occasionally almost as effectively as fishing
did; and that was saying much.
But the darkest mood of all his days was upon him now. When Rockwell
came, soon after Jim and the nurse left him, he simulated sleep, for he
had no mind to talk; and the doctor, deceived by his even breathing, had
left, contented. At last he was wholly alone with his own thoughts, as
he desired. From the moment Jim had read him the wires, which were the
real revelation of the situation to which he had come, he had been
travelling hard on the road leading to a cul-de-sac, from which there
was no egress save by breaking through the wall. Never, it might have
seemed, had his mind been clearer, but it was a clearness belonging to
the abnormal. It was a straight line of thought which, in its intensity,
gathered all other thoughts into its wake, reduced them to the control of
an obsession. It was borne in on his mind that his day was done, that
nothing could right the disorder which had strewn his path with broken
hopes and shattered ambitions. No life-work left, no schemes to
accomplish, no construction to achieve, no wealth to gain, no public
good to be won, no home to be his, no woman, his very own, to be his
counsellor and guide in the natural way!
As myriad thoughts drove through his brain on this Indian-summer night,
they all merged into the one obsession that he could no longer stay.
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