So! They knew how helpless he was; they were pitying him. _Pitying_ him!
Pitying _him_! He just tasted his coffee; with scowling brow he hastened
to the stables for his saddle horse and rode away alone. "Wait a few
minutes and I'll come with you," called Adelaide from the porch as he
galloped by. He pretended not to hear. When clear of the town he "took it
out" on his horse, using whip and spur until it gripped the bit and ran
away. He fought savagely with it; at a turn in the road it slipped and
fell, all but carrying him under. He was in such a frenzy that if he had
had a pistol he would have shot it. The chemical action of his crisis
precipitated in a black mass all the poison his nature had been absorbing
in those selfish, supercilious years. So long as that poison was held in
suspense it was imperceptible to himself as well as to others. But now,
there it was, unmistakably a poison. At the sight his anger vanished.
"I'm a beast!" he ejaculated, astonished. "And here I've been imagining I
was a fairly decent sort of fellow. What the devil have I been up to, to
make me like this?"

He walked along the road, leading his horse by the bridle slipped over
his arm. He resumed his reverie of the earlier morning, and began a
little less dimly to see his situation from the new viewpoint. "I deserve
what I'm getting," he said to himself. Then, at a twinge from the
resentment that had gone too deep to be ejected in an instant, he added:
"But that doesn't excuse _him_." His father was to blame for the whole
ugly business--for his plight within and without. Still, fixing the blame
was obviously unimportant beside the problem of the way out. And for that
problem he, in saner mood, began to feel that the right solution was to
do something and so become in his own person a somebody, instead of being
mere son of a somebody. "I haven't got this shock a minute too soon," he
reflected. "I must take myself in hand. I--"