In the new life utterly free. In the old responsible. Utterly irresponsible in the new. In the old tied up--tied up, that had been his cry. In the new released. What profit? In the old assured that happiness lay in the new. Now the new tried, and happiness still to seek--nay, happiness more lost, more deeply hidden than ever before. Then it had seemed to lie in freedom; now freedom had been searched and it was not. Where then? Was there some secret of happiness that he had missed? Suppose he were strong again. Imagine the few weeks passed that would return him his strength and let him leave this place. Would he go back to the wild things, the reckless things, the schooling of his body by exposure to pain, to hunger, to fatigue? No, for it had been tried. No, for he had tasted it and was nothing attracted to taste of it again. Was he afraid of its hurts? No, impervious to them, minding them not at all. But he had exulted in them, he had been exalted by them. He had believed they were leading somewhere. Ah, here he was looking back upon them, and he knew that they led nowhere. He had come through them, and he found himself come through empty. They might fall about him again when he was strong and went out to them--they might fall about him, but they would arouse nothing in him. He might once again challenge them and cause them furiously to assail him. He would know while he did so and while they scourged him that they were barren of virtue, empty, dry as ashes, profitless, containing nothing, concealing nothing. Where stood he? Where? Look, in the old days he had been slave of his mind, hounded by his brain. He had cast that away. He had escaped from it. Look, in the new he had turned for joy of living to his body and had mastered his body and all his fears and all his thoughts. He had lived through two lives--life that was not his own but given to others; life that was all his own and to none but himself belonged. Fruitless both. Was there some secret of happiness that he had missed? III