“I don’t believe I ever said such a thing; anyhow, if I did, I’ve entirely changed my views.”

“What a pity! but—­perhaps you have finished your education?”

“Yes, that’s it; and now I must go up-stairs.  I am engaged for this dance.”

“Clearly I’m out of it,” thought Mike.  “Not only do people see me with new eyes, but I see them with eyes that I cannot realize as mine.”

The drawing-room was empty; all had gone up-stairs to dance, so, finding himself alone, he went to a mirror to note the changes.  At first he seemed the same Mike Fletcher; but by degrees he recognized, or thought he recognized, certain remote and subtle differences.  He thought that the tenderness which used to reside in his eyes was evanescent or gone.  This tenderness had always been to him a subject of surprise, and he had never been able to satisfactorily explain its existence, knowing as he knew how all tenderness was in contradiction to his true character; at least, as he understood himself.  This tenderness was now replaced by a lurking evil look, and he remembered that he had noted such evil look in certain old libertines.  Certain lines about the face had grown harder, the hollow freckled cheeks seemed to have sunk a little, and the pump-handle chin seemed to be defining itself, even to caricature.  There was still a certain air of bravoure, of truculence, which attracted, and might still charm.  He turned from the mirror, went up-stairs, and danced three or four times.  He remained until the last, and followed by an increasing despair he muttered, as he got into a hansom—­

“If this is civilization I’d better go back to the Arabs.”

The solitude of his rooms chilled him in the roots of his mind; he looked around like a hunted animal.  He threw himself into an arm-chair.  Like a pure fire ennui burned in his heart.

“Oh, for rest!  I’m weary of life.  Oh, to slip back into the unconscious, whence we came, and pass for ever from the fitful buzzing of the midges.  To feel that sharp, cruel, implacable externality of things melt, vanish, and dissolve!

“The utter stupidity of life!  There never was anything so stupid; I mean the whole thing—­our ideas of right and wrong, love and duty, etc.  Great Scott! what folly.  The strange part of it all is man’s inability to understand the folly of living.  When I said to that woman to-night that I believed that the only evil is to bring children into the world, she said, ’But then the world would come to an end.’  I said, ’Do you not think it would be a good thing if it did?’ Her look of astonishment proved how unsuspicious she is of the truth.  The ordinary run of mortals do not see into the heart of things, nor do we, except in terribly lucid moments; then, seeing life truly, seeing it in its monstrous deformity, we cry out like children in the night.

“Then why do we go to Death with terror-stricken faces and reluctant feet?  We should go to Death in perfect confidence, like a bride to her husband, and with eager and smiling eyes.  But he who seeks Death goes with wild eyes—­upbraiding Life for having deceived him; as if Life ever did anything else!  He goes to Death as a last refuge.  None go to Death in deep calm and resignation, as a child goes to the kind and thoughtful nurse in whose arms he will find beautiful rest.