and yet he knew that this pain was but the gnawing of a great
loneliness in his heart. In these moments he had been sorry that
he had brought Gregson back into his life. And with Gregson he was
bringing back Eileen Brokaw. He was more than sorry for that. The
thought of it made him grow warm and uncomfortable, though the
night air from off the Bay was filled with the chill tang of the
northern icebergs. Again his thoughts brought him face to face
with the old pictures, the old life. With them came haunting
memories of a Philip Whittemore who had once lived, and who had
died; and with these ghosts of the past there surged upon him the
loneliness which seemed to crush and stifle him. Like one in a
dream he was swept back. Over the black spruce at his feet, far
into the gray, misty distances beyond, over forests and mountains
and the vast, grim silences his vision reached out until he saw
life as it had begun for him, and as he had lived it for a time.
It had opened fair. It had given promise. It had filled him with
hope and ambition. And then it had changed.

Unconsciously he clenched his hands as he thought of what had
followed, of the black days of ruin, of death, of the dissolution
of all that he had hoped and dreamed for. He had fought, because
he was born a fighter. He had risen again and again, only to find
misfortune still at his face. At first he had laughed, and had
called it bad luck. But the bad luck had followed him, dogging him
with a persistence which developed in him a new perspective of
things. He dropped away from his clubs. He began to measure men
and women as he had not measured them before, and there grew in
him slowly a revulsion for what those measurements revealed. The
spirit that was growing in him called out for bigger things, for
the wild freedom which he had tasted for a time with Gregson--for