Like one in a
dream he was swept back. Over the black spruce at his feet, far
into the gray, misty distances beyond, over forests and mountains
and the vast, grim silences his vision reached out until he saw
life as it had begun for him, and as he had lived it for a time.
It had opened fair. It had given promise. It had filled him with
hope and ambition. And then it had changed.
Unconsciously he clenched his hands as he thought of what had
followed, of the black days of ruin, of death, of the dissolution
of all that he had hoped and dreamed for. He had fought, because
he was born a fighter. He had risen again and again, only to find
misfortune still at his face. At first he had laughed, and had
called it bad luck. But the bad luck had followed him, dogging him
with a persistence which developed in him a new perspective of
things. He dropped away from his clubs. He began to measure men
and women as he had not measured them before, and there grew in
him slowly a revulsion for what those measurements revealed. The
spirit that was growing in him called out for bigger things, for
the wild freedom which he had tasted for a time with Gregson--for
a life which was not warped by the gilded amenities of the crowded
ballroom to-night, by the frenzied dollar-fight to-morrow.
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