When he had gone up stairs, and had heard, at a distance, the sound of the last good-night, and was fairly shut up again in the silence of his own room, the youth, for the first time, began to realize what he was doing. He paused, with a little consternation, a little fright, to question himself. For the first time, he saw clearly, without any possibility of self-delusion, what it was which had brought him here, and which made all the difference to him between happiness and misery. It was hard to realize now the state of mind he had been in a few hours before; but he did it, by dint of a great exertion, and saw, with a distinctness which alarmed him, how it was that everything had altered in his eyes. It was Matty’s presence that made all the difference between this subdued thrill of happiness and that blank of impatient and mortified misery. The young man tried to stand still and consider the reality of his position. He had stopped in his career, made a voluntary pause in his life, entered upon a species of existence which he felt in his heart was not more, but less, noble (for him) than his previous course--and what was it for? All for the uncertain smile, for the society--which might fail him at any time--of a woman so far out of his way, so utterly removed from his reach, as Matilda Frankland? For a moment, the youth was dismayed, and stopped short, Wisdom and Truth whispering in his ear. Love might be fair, but he knew enough to know that life must not be subservient to that witchery; and Colin’s good angel spoke to him in the silence, and bade him flee. Better to go back, and at once, to the grey and sombre world, where all his duties awaited him, than to stay here in this fool’s paradise. As he thought so he got up, and began to pace about his room, as though it had been a cage. Best to flee--it might take all the light out of his life and break his heart, but what else had he to look for sooner or later? He sat up half the night, still pacing about his room, hesitating over his fate, while the December storm raged outside. What was he to do? When he dropped to sleep at last, his heart betrayed him, and strayed away into celestial worlds of dreaming. He woke, still undecided, as he thought, to see the earliest wintry gleam of sunshine stealing in through his shutters. What was he to do? But already the daylight made him feel his terrors as so many shadows. His heart was a traitor, and he was glad to find it so; and that moment of indecision settled more surely than ever the bondage in which he seemed to have entangled his life. CHAPTER XV.