never trust any one again.

It may be said, all this is very unreasonable. Yes, it is; but then
people will judge the world by their own experience of it, and some
natures are more easily warped by wrong than others. No logic can cope
with feeling and prejudice. Because of his own misguided life and the
wrong he had received from others, Walter Gregory was no more able to
form a correct estimate of society than one color-blind is to judge of
the tints of flowers. And yet he belonged to that class who claim pre-
eminently to know the world. Because he thought he knew it so well he
hated and despised it, and himself as part of it.

The months that followed his great and sudden downfall dragged their
slow length along. He worked early and late, without thought of
sparing himself. If he could only see what the firm had lost through
him made good, he did not care what became of himself. Why should he?
There was little in the present to interest him, and the future
looked, in his depressed, morbid state, as monotonous and barren as
the sands of a desert. Seemingly, he had exhausted life, and it had
lost all zest for him.

But while his power to enjoy had gone, not so his power to suffer. His
conscience was uneasy, and told him in a vague way that something was
wrong. Reason, or, more correctly speaking, instinct, condemned his
life as a wretched blunder. He had lived for his own enjoyment, and
now, when but half through life, what was there for him to enjoy?

As in increasing weakness he dragged himself to the office on a sultry
September day, the thought occurred to him that the end was nearer
than he expected.