To George Dallas this mattered very little. Of the grosser kinds of pleasure he had had enough and more than enough; the better feelings of his nature had been awakened, and nothing could have induced him to allow himself to drift back into the slough from which he had emerged. Wandering through the long picture-galleries and museums, and gloating over their contents with thorough artistic appreciation, dreamily gazing out of his hotel window over a prospect of barge-dotted and tree-bordered canals which would gradually dissolve before his eyes, the beech avenue of the Sycamores arising in its place, recalling Clare Carruthers's soft voice and ringing laugh and innocent trusting manner, George Dallas could scarcely believe that for months and months of his past life he had been the companion of sharpers and gamblers, and had been cat off from all communication with everything and everybody that in his youth he had been taught to look up to and respect. He shuddered as he recollected the orgies which he had taken part in, the company he had kept, the life he had led. He groaned aloud and stamped with rage as he thought of time lost, character blighted, opportunities missed. And his rage this time was vented on himself: he did not, as usual, curse his stepfather for having pronounced his edict of banishment; he did not lay the blame on luck or fate, which generally bore the burden; he was man enough to look his past life fairly in the face, and to own to himself that all its past privations, and what might have been its future miseries, were of his own creation. What might have been, but what should not be now. A new career lay before him, a career of honour and fame, inducements to pursue which such as he had never dreamed of were not wanting, and by Heaven's help he would succeed.