as he was drawn more and more into the network of the relationships of
this extraordinary man,--nay, as he inevitably became a part of that
network,--a period of bewilderment ensued. He found himself involved,
and quite naturally, in unpremeditated activities, running errands,
forming human ties on a human basis. No question was asked, no
credentials demanded or rejected. Who he was made no difference
--he was a friend of Horace Bentley's. He had less time to read, less
time to think, to scan the veil of his future.

He had run through a score of volumes, critical, philosophical,
scientific, absorbing their contents, eagerly anticipating their
conclusions; filled, once he had begun, with a mania to destroy,
a savage determination to leave nothing,--to level all . . . .

And now, save for the less frequent relapsing moods, he had grown
strangely unconcerned about his future, content to live in the presence
of this man; to ignore completely the aspects of a life incomprehensible
to the few, besides Mr. Bentley, who observed it.

What he now mostly felt was relief, if not a faint self-congratulation
that he had had the courage to go through with it, to know the worst.
And he was conscious even, at times, of a faint reviving sense of freedom
he had not known since the days at Bremerton. If the old dogmas were
false, why should he regret them? He began to see that, once he had
suspected their falsity, not to have investigated were to invite decay;
and he pictured himself growing more unctuous, apologetic, plausible.
He had, at any rate, escaped the more despicable fate, and if he went to
pieces now it would be as a man, looking the facts in the face,--not as
a coward and a hypocrite.