that sort of thing, if she found Blair--who was only a baby
anyhow--the kind of man she could love, why then he was
disappointed in Elizabeth. That was all. He was not jealous, or
anything like that; he was just disappointed; he was sorry that
Elizabeth was that kind of girl. "Very, very sorry," David said
to himself; and his eyes stung.... (Ah, well; one may smile; but
the pangs are real enough to the calf! The trouble with us is we
have forgotten our own pangs, so we doubt his.) ... Yes, David
was sorry; but the whole darned business was nothing to him,
because, unlike Blair, he was not a boy, and he could not waste
time over women; he had his future to think of. In fact, he felt
that to make the most of himself he must never marry.

Then suddenly these bitter forecastings ceased. He had come upon
some boys who were throwing stones at the dust-grimed windows of
an unused foundry shed. Along the roof of the big, gaunt
building, dilapidated and deserted, was a vast line of lights
that had long been a target for every boy who could pick up a
pebble. Glass lay in splinters on the slope of sheet-iron below
the sashes, and one could look in through yawning holes at
silent, shadowy spaces that had once roared with light from
swinging ladles and flowing cupolas; but there were a few whole
panes left yet. At the sound of crashing glass, David, being a
human boy, stopped and looked on, at first with his hands in his
pockets; then he picked up a stone himself. A minute later he was
yelling and smashing with the rest of them; but when he had
broken a couple of lights, curiously enough, desire failed; he
felt a sudden distaste for breaking windows,--and for everything
else! It was a sort of spiritual nausea, and life was black and
bitter on his tongue. He was conscious of an actual sinking below