The world was full of sweet odours. He had delicate and powerful nostrils. Why not enjoy them? The world was full of beauty ravishing to the eye. He had keen eyes trained to see. Why should he not open his eyes and gaze on it all? The world was full of entrancing music. He had ears trained to hear. Why should he stuff them with dreams of a doubtful future, and not hear it all? The world was full of things soft and good to the touch. Why should he not grasp them? His hands were cunning, and every finger tingled with sensitive nerve tips. The world was full of good things sweet to the taste, why should he not eat and drink as others, as old and wise perhaps? Was a man full-grown until he had seen, felt, smelled, tasted, and heard all life? Was there anything after all, in good or bad? Were these things not names? If not, how could we know unless we tried them? What was the good of good things? “Am I not a narrow-minded fool, instead of a wise man, to throttle my impulses and deny the flesh for an imaginary gain?” he asked himself aloud. She had written he was free. “Well, by the eternal, I will be free!” he exclaimed, “I will sweep the whole gamut of human passion and human emotion. I will drink life to the deepest dregs of its red wine. I will taste, feel, see, touch, hear all! I will not be cheated. I will know for myself what it is to live.” When he woke to the consciousness of time and place, he found he was seated at the Sulphur Spring where it gushed from the foot of the hill, and that the eastern horizon was grey with the dawn. A sense of new-found power welled up in him. He had regained control of himself. “Good! I will no longer be a moping love-sick fool. I am a man. To will is to live, to cease to will is to die. I have regained my will,--I live!” He walked rapidly back to town with vigourous step. His mind was clear. “I will never write her another line until she writes to me. I will not be a dog and whine at any rich man’s door or any woman’s feet. The world is large, and I am large. I will be sought as well as seek. Besides, my country needs me. If I am to give myself it will be for larger ends than for the smiles of one woman!” And then for two weeks he entered deliberately on a series of dissipations. He left Hambright and sought convivial friends on the sea coast. He amazed them by asking to be taught cards. He swept the gamut of all the senses without reserve, day after day, and night after night. At the end of two weeks he found himself haunting the post-office oftener, with a vague sense of impending calamity. “The thing’s all over I tell you!” he said to himself again and again. And then he would hurry to the next mail as eagerly as ever. As the excitement began to tire him, the sense of longing for her face, and voice, and the touch of her hand became intolerable. “My God, I’d give all the world holds of sin to see her and hear one word from her lips!” he exclaimed as he locked himself in his room one night.