cleanliness that was comforting and invigorating, and helped bring back
the freshness of his boyhood.

For the first time in many years, his days were full of work and,
asleep, awake, or at work, his hours were clock-like and steadied him
into machine-like regularity. It was work of his hands, to be sure, and
not even high work of that kind, but still it was work. And the measure
of the self-respect that this fact alone brought him was worth it all.
Already, his mind was taking character from his body. He was distinctly
less morbid and he found himself thinking during those long days of the
sail of what he should do after the war was over. His desire to get
killed was gone, and it was slowly being forced on him that he had been
priggish, pompous, self-absorbed, hair-splitting, lazy,
good-for-nothing, when there was no need for him to be other than what
he meant to be when he got back. And as for Judith, he felt the
bitterness of gall for himself when he thought of her, and he never
allowed himself to think of her except to absolve her, as he knew she
would not absolve herself, and to curse himself heartily and bitterly.
He understood now. It was just her thought of his faithfulness, her
feeling of responsibility for him--the thought that she had not been as
kind to him as she might have been (and she had always been kinder than
he deserved)--all this had loosed her tears and her self-control, and
had thrown her into a mood of reckless self-sacrifice. And when she
looked up into his face that night of the parting, he felt her looking
into his soul and seeing his shame that he had lost his love because he
had lost himself, and she was quite right to turn from him, as she did,
without another word. Already, however, he was healthy enough to believe
that he was not quite so hopeless as she must think him--not as hopeless
as he had thought himself. Life, now, with even a soldier's work, was
far from being as worthless as life with a gentleman's idleness had