VIII.

A STRUGGLE FOR SELF-CONTROL.


He left her at Asheville as she wished--"where I have been happiest and
where I wish you to think of me." On the train coming north he reviewed his
past and made his plans for the future.

As to the past he had only one regret--that he had not learned to
appreciate Alice until too late. He felt that his failure to advance had
been due entirely to himself--to his inertia, his willingness to seize any
pretext for refraining from action. As to the future--work, work with a
purpose. His mind must be fully and actively occupied. There must be no
leisure, for leisure meant paralysis.

At the Twenty-third Street ferry-house he got into a hansom and gave the
address of "the flat." He did not note where he was until the hansom drew
up at the curb. He leaned forward and looked at the house--at their
windows with the curtains which she had draped so gracefully, which she and
he had selected at Vantine's one morning. How often he had seen her
standing between those curtains, looking out for him, her blue-black hair
waving back from her forehead so beautifully and her face ready to smile so
soon as ever she should catch sight of him.

He leaned back and closed his eyes. The blood was pounding through his
temples and his eyeballs seemed to be scalding under the lids.