Why should he not say, “Evil, be thou my good,” once and for all, and have done with a fruitless struggle? That was the thought which seethed in his mind as he slowly made his way along the Strand, surely the least likely street in London where one might expect that the good angel would find a chance of turning the scale. The pushing crowd annoyed him; he paused for a minute, adding another unit to the little cluster of men which may always be seen before the window of a London picture-dealer. He stopped less to look at the picture than for the sake of being still and out of the hurrying tide. His eye wandered from landscape to landscape with very faint interest until suddenly he caught sight of a familiar view, which stirred his heart strangely. It was a picture of the Romsdalshorn; he knew it in an instant, with its strange and beautiful outline, rising straight and sheer up into a wintry blue sky. A thousand recollections came thronging back upon him, all the details of a holiday month spent in that very neighborhood with his father and Sigrid and Swanhild. He tried to drag himself away, but he could not. Sigrid’s face kept rising before him as if in protest against that “Why not?” which still claimed a hearing within him. “If she were here,” he thought to himself, “I might keep straight. But that’s all over now, and I can’t bear this life any longer. I have tried everything and have failed. And, after all, who cares? It’s the way of the world. I shant be worse than thousand of others.” Still the thought of Sigrid held him in check, the remembrance of her clear blue eyes seemed to force him to go deeper down beneath the surface of the sullen anger and disappointment which were goading him on to an evil life. Was it after all quite true? Had he really tried everything? Two or three times during his wanderings he had thought of Roy Boniface, and had wondered whether he should seek him out again; but in his trouble he had shrunk from going to comparative strangers, and, as far as business went, it was scarcely likely that Roy could help him. Besides, of the rest of the family he knew nothing; for aught he knew the father might be a vulgar, purse-proud tradesman—the last sort of man to whom he could allow himself to be under any obligation. Again came the horrible temptation, again that sort of terror of his own nature. He turned once more to the picture of the Romsdalshorn; it seemed to be the one thing which could witness to him of truth and beauty and a life above the level of the beasts. Very slowly and gradually he began to see things as they really were; he saw that if he yielded to this temptation he could never again face Sigrid with a clear conscience. He saw, too, that his only safeguard lay in something which would take him out of himself. “I _will_ get work,” he said, almost fiercely. “For Sigrid’s sake I’ll have one more try.”