And when he began to sum up his achievements, he was forced to own that most of them were athletic triumphs, and athletics meant little to him. He had long ceased to worship them. Because a man could make a big score in a House match, it did not mean that he was in any way fit for the battle of life; and what else had he done? He had carried on guerrilla warfare with "the Bull." It had never come to a real head; so little does. Most things are left unaccomplished in the end; and what had he gained by this contest, and what had been the use of it? "The Bull" was one of the few really fine masters in the school. He was a man, and towered above the puny pettiness of Rogers; he was the "noblest Roman of them all," yet Gordon had spent a whole year fighting against a man whom he at heart admired. It was, of course, the inevitable clash of two egotisms; but that did not alter the facts. He had been wasting himself fighting against a fine man, when there were so many rotten traditions and useless customs that ought to be attacked; but he had let them alone. The only abuse he had attacked was the worship of sport, and he began to wonder whether it had been worth it. Might it not have been better to have let the school go on believing in its gods a little longer? He had broken down a false god, but had he given the School anything to worship in its stead? Better a false god than no god at all. Rudd had been right. He had smashed through a garden of dandelions. He had rooted up flowers and weeds indiscriminately. He had done nothing wonderful; and he had left desolation behind him. Nothing would grow for some time in the plot he had ruined. And yet he was "a great success," the world said. "Only the superficial do not judge by appearances," Wilde had said, mocking at society; and he had been right. Life was a sham, a mass of muddled evolutions; the world was too slack to find out the truth, or perhaps it was afraid to discover it. For the truth was not pleasant. Gordon did not know what it was; all he saw was that life was built of shams, that no one worshipped anything but the god of things that seem. He lay supine, cursing at the darkness.