And yet it was a desperately hard ordeal; for this man was by nature essentially joyous, and sociable, and fitted to be the king of all good company; and the whole of his life had been spent in the open, in brisk and active exercise; and sunlight and fresh air were to him as the very breath of his nostrils. But here he was, day after day, week after week, chained to these dismal tasks; in solitude; with the far white dream of ambition becoming more and more distant and obscured; and with a terrible consciousness ever growing upon him that in coming away from even the mere neighbourhood of Meenie, from the briefest companionship with her, he had sacrificed the one beautiful thing, the one precious possession, that his life had ever held for him or would hold. What though the impalpable barrier of Glengask and Orosay rose between him and her? He was no sentimental Claude Melnotte; he had common sense; he accepted facts. Of course Meenie would go away in due time. Of course she was destined for higher things. But what then? What of the meanwhile? Could anything happen to him quite so wonderful, or worth the striving for, as Meenie’s smile to him as she met him in the road? What for the time being made the skies full of brightness, and made the pulses of the blood flow gladly, and the day become charged with a kind of buoyancy of life? And as for these vague ambitions for the sake of which he had bartered away his freedom and sold himself into slavery—towards what did they tend? For whom? The excited atmosphere the Americans had brought with them had departed now: alas! this other atmosphere into which he had plunged was dull and sad enough, in all conscience; and the leaden days weighed down upon him; and the slow and solitary hours would not go by.