Arthur Curtis had not been leading a self-denying or ascetic life; indeed he had been nearer the depths of moral decadence in the recent months than ever before. He had got reckless about himself and his life; not coarsely reckless, as men are who plunge into the ruder dissipations, but so discouraged and weary that by mere dint of ceasing to care what he did, he had ceased to do well, and almost dropped into the gulf on the opposite side. He had been foolish enough in the past, but his aim had been towards, if not the most exalted objects of ambition, yet those of honesty, truth, faithfulness, and pure living. It might have been unwise to love as he did, so far out of the region he himself belonged to; but, at least, his love brought no harm to any one, and had no evil thought in it. He had been faithful to it, notwithstanding everything that had come in his way; opposition and entreaty on the side of his family, and partial disgust and discontent on his own, had not moved him; but of what good had all his faithfulness been? What good had his honesty and pure intentions done him? He was stranded upon the shore--laid aside helpless and with little hope from the graver developments of existence. He was bound for life to the wife who had become a stranger to him--who had thrust him away from her; and hopelessly cut off from all other honourable connections, from the happiness of home, from everything which makes up to a young man for the loss of his first freedom. Arthur had all the evils of that freedom without the good of it; he was bound yet let loose, tempted to every kind of license, yet in such a position that ordinary and innocent liberty was denied to him. Nothing could be more cruel to a high-spirited young man not trained in the ways of self-denial. And by the time these two years were over he had become sick of it all: The restraints that confined him, the conscience which reminded him of these restraints, and the injured love that gnawed at his heart and felt like rage. What good had come to him of all his efforts to do well--of all the honest meaning of his soul? The gayest and least self-denying of his comrades was better off than he; and he had been on the borders of vice--not compelled by any force of passion, but rather by disgust and unwilling cynicism, the what does it matter? of the despairing soul. On the borders of vice--and half-unbelieving in anything better--half giving up all that was better in this world--trying to persuade himself that nothing mattered. Youth comes to this alternative of happiness very easily. The wisdom which has found out that in happiness, or unhappiness, life jogs on much the same, and that all is not unmitigated evil in the worst circumstances, nor unmitigated good in the best; is an elderly kind of wisdom. But Arthur was impatient of his own hopelessness--he felt his own weariness intolerable; which is as much as to say that neither the hopelessness nor the impatience was entirely